goTriad.com

A Q&A with the painter from Greensboro
katiewallart.com

What she does

In each painting, my goal is to capture vivid color, swirling movement and a play of paint patterns on the surface of the canvas. My art is mostly representational, but it's more about painting the world that I want to see instead of capturing a photo-realistic image.

Making art a priority

As a little girl, I was always into art. I drew people a lot, and rainbows. And my people and my rainbows, I always had to add in as much frivolous, ridiculous details as I could. My people had not one bow, but four.

Art was always a part of my life through high school, and then I got to college. &ellipses; I studied biology and loved it, and I got to junior year when you start thinking about, 'Oh my gosh, what am I going to do with my life?' and my answer was never anything in biology, it was, 'I have to have art in my life somehow.' And I was pre-med thinking, 'I'll do this and be able to have art in my life.' But I quickly realized I had to make it a priority instead of a subcategory of what I was going to be doing.

The connection between biology, art

I don't think there's as big of a difference as people think there is in biology and art. If you're not an artist, you're probably surprised by that, but if you are an artist and you're fascinated with minutiae, you'll understand the connection there.

This is really nerdy, but I'm going to tell you anyway. I was in a genetics lab in class, and we had this experiment where we had to take out the ovaries of fruit flies, which is both disgusting and fascinating at the same time. We finally photographed this under this fluorescent blue light, and it popped up on the big screen, and you could actually see chromosomes in the eggs. And what struck me the most was, 'Oh, my gosh, what a beautiful shade of blue,' because of the dye. And I've actually carried that picture around for years thinking one day I'll paint this; it'll be some great abstract painting.

Her first paintings

I wanted to make my mom happy, and she always wanted me to paint flowers. So I would zoom in, kind of like Georgia O'Keeffe.

I think what I'm fascinated with is moving from little details to the big pictures. It's so incomprehensible to me how you get from learning molecules, atoms, cells and suddenly you're at life. And painting is sort of the same process. You just have a surface, you have little dabs of paint and a brush, and somehow you're able to create, hopefully, this gorgeous picture at the end.

Sublime art

There's this issue of the sublime in art, and whether you buy into that or not, there is some credence to it. Rothko wanted people to stand in front of his paintings and just feel a sense of awe. In a way, I like that, too. I don't really believe that the painting has to be sublime, but when you stand in front of one of my larger canvases that's really full of intense color, I want you to just relax and melt into the visual candy of it. I think that's what these tree paintings are doing for me at least. I feel like I'm home when I stand in front of my big, red tree.

When inspiration strikes

When I'm happy, I paint. When I'm falling in love, I paint. But there have been times when I felt really frustrated because I felt like I didn't know what to paint. And to get through that, I think the best thing for me to do is to look at other people's work.

There's this idea that you can't be an artist and be a professional or be an artist and make a living, and it's not true. You can do both; it's just hard. I never thought I'd be able to paint full time like I am now. I'm so grateful for it. I try to live by the question -- it's a famous quotation, I'm not sure who said it -- but 'What would you do if you knew you could not fail?' and anytime I'm frustrated or anytime I can't think of something to paint, I ask myself that, and my answer is always, 'I will be an artist.' That's who I am.

-- As told to Carla Kucinski Seward. Contact her at 373-7319 or carla@gotriad.com.

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