Katie Hector - “Dreamer”

Edition of 20+3 AP

50x70cm

Katie Hector (b. 1992) in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, is an artist based near Los Angeles, California. Hector’s studio practice revolves around process-based paintings that layer dye and bleach to create portrait-likenesses that symbolize loss, grief, intimacy, and longing. She earned a BFA in painting from the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University in 2014. Her artwork has been exhibited nationally and internationally and has garnered her recognition through awards, scholarships, and international residencies.

My portraits of friends, people I’ve met, and strangers are allegories of longing, intimacy, and grief in response to isolation and dissociation. Methodically and tediously layering pigment on canvas I build up and erase sections to create composite likenesses. Each fine layer of paint, allows me to have a direct conversation with the canvas itself. Within each painting, I am constantly testing the limits of the fibers and the canvas’s ability to retain or let go of marks. Thus the memory of the surface produces the final afterimage; an impression of personhood, an uncanny portrait.