Kate Shepherd

Known for her richly colored paintings built with layers of monochromatic enamel, Shepherd’s decades-long exploration of perspectival space investigates the relationship of paintings to their environs; the various reflective surfaces establishing a spatial discourse across the panel, the viewer, and the gallery space. Joined wood panels, connoting the architecture for which the paint is meant, are the base of the paintings. This method results in a gleaming, reflective surface, which allows the viewers to see their own reflections and also guards the intimate image from view. At times, Shepherd interrupts the glossy quality of the enamel, sanding large areas down to produce velvety fields that show pentimenti of color and faint lines of obliterated brushstrokes. Being situationally reactive to light and movement, the paintings take on sculptural characteristics in their constant change. The artist’s oeuvre also encompasses works on paper, which examine her constant evolution of the exploration of primary, secondary, and tertiary color.