Katie's profile
I was born in Jackson, Mississippi, out in the country. My closest neighbors were my family. In 1945, my great grandfather bought a family compound and suggested strongly that all his children, granddaughters and their husbands build their tiny fiefdoms on it. He wanted a kingdom where he could watch over us and rule gently. My biography is going to be full of sweat, fireflies, tight lipped and overly starched women, handsy older gentlemen with a droll "Come here, sugar." and a very deep desire to somehow make it more beautiful than it was.
As a toddler, my mother worried that I wouldn’t speak. She would watch as her questions and comments didn’t receive the normal infant lisping responses she expected. Instead, my chubby, bumbling hands would reach for crayons and paper. We held long talks using drawing after drawing to cross the communication divide. Those papers are yellow and curling at the edges now but she kept every single one. My brother and I grew up playing in empty church conference rooms making towers with every Common Book of Prayer we could find and waging war with the styrofoam coffee cups from the AA meeting our mother attended next door. We could say the Nicene Creed with the best of them, the 12 steps were as familiar as our ABC’s, and the stale smell of cigarette smoke and burnt coffee was the smell of family and safety.
Alcoholism, the physical allergy coupled with the mental obsession, is rampant in my family. It is a bomb built into our DNA. We have a weakness and it has claimed more victims than it should have. When I was about 6 my grandfather was napping on the couch, cigarette in hand, while we played on the orange shag carpet in front of the fireplace. I watched as the can of Budweiser on his belly slowly rose and fell with his breathing. My grandmother worked busily in the kitchen until the stink of smoke caught her attention. She rushed into the living room, threw a towel over the smouldering couch and quietly led her drunk husband to the bed. The women of my family were masters of coverups and the sweetly spoken snide remark. A lilting “bless her heart” was the painkiller before hurtful words. Scandals and secrets were the assets they traded back and forth as they scrambled over each other in pursuit of higher status in the Jackson Country Club. Secrets were whispered about the young woman who had a baby on the way and no husband. Where would her parents send her to have that thing? The uncle who slit his own throat in the shed behind his grown son’s home, was simply a good man with a ‘bad ticker’. We couldn’t be truthful with each other if our lives depended on it.
Those false women were tasked with just being beautiful, as if that was the price we had to pay for existing. I was pressured to find a suitable man, marry, produce offspring to tie him to me, and then work to raise our social status while maintaining the veneer that this was all lovely and smooth. Instead, my art became my husband. My art became my children. It wasn’t always lovely and smooth. And I was summarily disinvited from the circle of my peers.
I was lucky enough to attend the Mississippi School of Arts in Brookhaven, Mississippi with 42 other weird kids from all corners of the state. We discovered that there were others out there just like us. We found friends with a thirst for something meaningful and beautiful. We were all processing our own histories and experiences while we formed the first real community some of us had ever known. From there I joined the ranks of graduates from Mississippi College where I achieved my B.A. of Fine Arts. After that, my whole career has been pounding the pavements to find a place for my work.
My current pursuit is focused on representing what a southern lady really should be, instead of the paper thin masks I saw growing up. The women I am creating are real, honest, broken and weary. They are quirky and loving, hoping to peek out of their frames to see understanding in your face.The women of my childhood, my models of behavior growing up, were silent and passive among men and they were cruel to each other. We weren’t taught to support and hold each other up against our shared trials, but to slash and cut each other down in a sweet manner with smiles plastered on our faces. I am trying to find the boundless care and energy we all have in ourselves and pull it to the forefront. The women in my paintings are powerful and honorable and they CARE. They are the kind of woman I am trying to be today.
As a toddler, my mother worried that I wouldn’t speak. She would watch as her questions and comments didn’t receive the normal infant lisping responses she expected. Instead, my chubby, bumbling hands would reach for crayons and paper. We held long talks using drawing after drawing to cross the communication divide. Those papers are yellow and curling at the edges now but she kept every single one. My brother and I grew up playing in empty church conference rooms making towers with every Common Book of Prayer we could find and waging war with the styrofoam coffee cups from the AA meeting our mother attended next door. We could say the Nicene Creed with the best of them, the 12 steps were as familiar as our ABC’s, and the stale smell of cigarette smoke and burnt coffee was the smell of family and safety.
Alcoholism, the physical allergy coupled with the mental obsession, is rampant in my family. It is a bomb built into our DNA. We have a weakness and it has claimed more victims than it should have. When I was about 6 my grandfather was napping on the couch, cigarette in hand, while we played on the orange shag carpet in front of the fireplace. I watched as the can of Budweiser on his belly slowly rose and fell with his breathing. My grandmother worked busily in the kitchen until the stink of smoke caught her attention. She rushed into the living room, threw a towel over the smouldering couch and quietly led her drunk husband to the bed. The women of my family were masters of coverups and the sweetly spoken snide remark. A lilting “bless her heart” was the painkiller before hurtful words. Scandals and secrets were the assets they traded back and forth as they scrambled over each other in pursuit of higher status in the Jackson Country Club. Secrets were whispered about the young woman who had a baby on the way and no husband. Where would her parents send her to have that thing? The uncle who slit his own throat in the shed behind his grown son’s home, was simply a good man with a ‘bad ticker’. We couldn’t be truthful with each other if our lives depended on it.
Those false women were tasked with just being beautiful, as if that was the price we had to pay for existing. I was pressured to find a suitable man, marry, produce offspring to tie him to me, and then work to raise our social status while maintaining the veneer that this was all lovely and smooth. Instead, my art became my husband. My art became my children. It wasn’t always lovely and smooth. And I was summarily disinvited from the circle of my peers.
I was lucky enough to attend the Mississippi School of Arts in Brookhaven, Mississippi with 42 other weird kids from all corners of the state. We discovered that there were others out there just like us. We found friends with a thirst for something meaningful and beautiful. We were all processing our own histories and experiences while we formed the first real community some of us had ever known. From there I joined the ranks of graduates from Mississippi College where I achieved my B.A. of Fine Arts. After that, my whole career has been pounding the pavements to find a place for my work.
My current pursuit is focused on representing what a southern lady really should be, instead of the paper thin masks I saw growing up. The women I am creating are real, honest, broken and weary. They are quirky and loving, hoping to peek out of their frames to see understanding in your face.The women of my childhood, my models of behavior growing up, were silent and passive among men and they were cruel to each other. We weren’t taught to support and hold each other up against our shared trials, but to slash and cut each other down in a sweet manner with smiles plastered on our faces. I am trying to find the boundless care and energy we all have in ourselves and pull it to the forefront. The women in my paintings are powerful and honorable and they CARE. They are the kind of woman I am trying to be today.
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