Katherine Porter

Katherine Porter (1941) is an American artist. Born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa in 1941, Porter is considered one of the most important contemporary artists associated with Maine.[1] She resists categorization.[2][3] Through the medium of painting and drawing her visually stunning canvases convey the conflict inherent in life. She expresses her ideas with a visual vocabulary that is "geometric and gestural, abstract and figurative, decorative and raw, lyric and muscular."[1]

For persons of a similar name, see Katherine Porter (disambiguation).

Porter has shown twice in the Whitney Biennial and solo exhibitions at the Knoedler Gallery in London, the Nina Nielsen Gallery in Boston, and the Andre Emmerich and Salander-O'Reilly Galleries in New York. Her work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art,[4] Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and the Tel Aviv Museum in Jerusalem.[5][6] She currently resides in Maine.

Early life and education

Katherine Louanne Pavlis was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and grew up in rural Iowa. Her birth date has been given variously as September 11, 1944[7] and 1941.[8] She moved to Colorado in the late 1950s, studying at Colorado College in Colorado Springs, Colorado from 1959-1961. She also studied at Boston University, where her teachers included Conger Metcalf and Walter Tandy Murch.[7] She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in 1963.[9][10]

While living in Colorado Katherine met and married Stephen Porter, a sculptor and the child of photographer Eliot Porter and his wife Aline Kilham. Stephen and Katherine were married on January 28, 1962,[11] and divorced in 1967.[7][11][12] As a couple they traveled to South America, spending time in the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador, Chile, Argentina, and Peru. Katherine Porter's concern for the political and social conflict in South America is shown in many of her works, including Swann's Song (1975).[13]

Career

Porter was active in Boston's artistic community during much of the 1960s.[14] She was part of The Studio Coalition in Boston’s South End, combining artistic and political concerns.[15][16] In 1971 she held her first solo exhibitions, and sold her first work to collector Betty Parsons.[17]

In 1972 Porter moved to New Mexico,[14] where she lived until 1976. During this time she continued to exhibit in New England, and by 1979, she had returned to Boston.[13] During this period, works such as her Swann's Song (1975) built upon a grid to achieves three-dimensional effects.[18][13]

She later moved to Maine. By 2017, she was living in Rhinebeck, New York. She is considered one of New England's significant painters.[19][20]

Katherine Porter received an honorary doctorate from Colby College in 1982[9] and an honorary doctorate from Bowdoin College in Maine in 1992.[21]

Style

My paintings are about chaos, constant changes, opposites, clashes, big movements in nature... History, natural things, short wars. I try to put everything into a picture. What you see is what you come up against in the world." Katherine Larson, 1982[2]

While Elizabeth Murray and Katherine Porter are also involved with formal values in their paintings, these two artists are more openly concerned with an articulation of conflict. Not only is it conflict of a personal, inner nature, but it is also anxiety resulting from the effort to resolve problems raised by the history of abstract painting and their need to establish a place in that history.[22]

Bibliography
  • Porter, Katherine; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (1980). Katherine Porter: works on paper 1969-1979: an exhibition. San Francisco: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. ISBN 9780884010340. OCLC 6922285.
  • Porter, Katherine; Rose Art Museum (1985). Katherine Porter: paintings, 1969-1984. Waltham, Mass.: Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University. OCLC 13186606.
  • Porter, Katherine; André Emmerich Gallery (1990). Katherine Porter, New Paintings: March 8 to 31, 1990. New York: André Emmerich Gallery.
  • Moss, Stacey (1992). The Graphic Art of Katherine Porter. Belmont, CA: Wiegand Gallery, College of Notre Dame.
  • Porter, Katherine; Gasman, Lydia; Yau, John (2002). Noon Knives. Hard Press Editions.

See also

References
  1. Moss, Stacey (1991). Katherine Porter: Paintings/Drawings. Brunswick, Maine: Bowdoin College Museum of Art.
  2. Larson, Kay (February 2, 1987). "Guerilla Tactics". New York Magazine. 20 (5): 54–55. Retrieved April 4, 2019.
  3. Russell, John (February 27, 1981). "of the National edition with the headline: ART: JUICY ABSTRACTIONS BY KATHERINE PORTER". The New York Times. p. C18. Retrieved April 4, 2019.
  4. Rewald, Sabine (Fall 1990). "New York Number" (PDF). Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin. 48 (2): 76.
  5. "Katherine Porter". Vermont Studio Center. Archived from the original on December 24, 2014. Retrieved November 15, 2014.
  6. "Katherine Porter". Arthur S. Goldberg Collection at Northeastern University Library. Archived from the original on August 24, 2014.
  7. Wadsworth, Susan M. (1987). "Political and moral landscapes: The paintings of Katherine Porter". Arts Magazine. 62 (1 (September)): 84–87. Retrieved April 3, 2019.
  8. "Artists Katherine Porter Biography". Galerie Hubert Winter. Retrieved April 3, 2019.
  9. Langlykke, Peter; Amenoff, Gregory; Berthot, Jake; Buchwald, Howard; Fishman, Louise; Kramer, Harry; Porter, Katherine (1983). Six painters ; Gregory Amenoff, Jake Berthot, Howard Buchwald, Louise Fishman, Harry Kramer, Katherine Porter : an exhibition at The Hudson River Museum, May 25 through July 17, 1983. Yonkers, N.Y.: Hudson River Museum. pp. 43–44.
  10. Heller, Jules; Heller, Nancy G., eds. (2013). "Porter, Katherine (1941-)". North American women artists of the twentieth century : a biographical dictionary. New York: Routledge. p. 450. ISBN 978-1135638825. Retrieved April 2, 2019.
  11. Simpson, Patrick (December 6, 2008). "Descendants of Joseph Putnam and Elizabeth Hawthorne Porter 8th great-grandparents of Charlie David Feaver Parents of Gen. Israel Porter Putnam" (PDF). Family Tree. Retrieved April 3, 2019.
  12. "THE PORTERS-PARSONS COLLECTION" (PDF). New Mexico Museum of Art Library and Archives. 2015. Retrieved April 3, 2019.
  13. Teilman, H. B (1979). "Katherine Porter's Swann's Song". Carnegie Magazine. 53 (2): 4–5.
  14. Arghyros, Nan (1975). "Katherine Porter, Painter". New Boston Review (June): 14.
  15. Lafo, Rachel R.; Capasso, Nicholas; Uhrhane, Jennifer (2002). Painting in Boston, 1950-2000. DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park. pp. 31–32. ISBN 978-1558493643. Retrieved April 4, 2019.
  16. Expanding Abstraction: New England Women Painters, 1950 to Now (PDF). deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum. 2017. p. 49.
  17. "Katherine Porter 11. November – 23. December 2011". Galerie Hubert Winter. Retrieved April 4, 2019.
  18. Carrier, David (1985). "Part II: Postmodernist Art Criticism". Leonardo. 18 (2): 108–113. doi:10.2307/1577880. JSTOR 1577880.
  19. McQuaid, Cate (April 13, 2017). "Nevertheless, they persisted: standout New England women painters". Boston Globe. Retrieved April 4, 2019.
  20. McQuaid, Cate (April 30, 2013). "What's up at Boston-area art galleries". Boston Globe. Retrieved April 4, 2019.
  21. "Bowdoin Honorary Degree Recipients". George J. Mitchell Department of Special Collection & Archives Bowdoin College Library. Retrieved April 3, 2019.
  22. Shearer, Linda (1977). "Introduction". Nine artists : Theodoron awards. New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. p. 6. ISBN 9780892070084. Retrieved April 4, 2019.
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