KATE SHEPHERD

A large-scale, site-specific wall painting commands the main gallery space. In this installation, Shepherd uses various tones of colour to generate the illusion of translucent overlapping shapes. The construction implies a three-dimensional perspectival space on a single wall—flat colours layered atop one another create depth where they appear to circle around one another and overlap. The emotional impact of colour is most evident in this wall mural, whose monumental, horizontal scale engages with the viewer’s body in both time and space.

In a selection of paintings in enamel and oil on aluminium panel, Shepherd paints her constructions— her diagrammatic configurations of linear forms—in thin lines of black and white painted on smooth, reflective surfaces rendered in a variety of colours ranging from pastel pink to vibrant yellow to black and white. For Shepherd, her choice of colours is dictated by innate emotional reaction to each individual composition, thereby evoking a relationship between colour and form. In a selection of works, Shepherd divides the background of the painting between two tones, adding another plane to the pictorial field. The glossy surface of the enamel painting reflects its environs, placing the painting in a perpetual, dynamic conversation with its viewers and surroundings. These paintings present entirely new constructions, hand-rendered on Shepherd’s pictorial planes, that convey varying degrees of stability and tension like sculptures made with translucent planes. Some works see many forms overlap, building a sturdy core, while others see delicately balanced configurations of barely touching shapes. In a series of watercolours on view in the small gallery, monochromatic planar shapes are rendered in contrasting tones to stir a sensation of movement and dynamism. Shepherd’s background in figurative painting is hinted at by way of the attention to naturalistic gravity and credible space.

Throughout the gallery, a selection of large-scale painted plywood sculptures prompts a dialogue with the paintings on view. The sculptures mirror the lexicon Shepherd develops throughout the painted works, revealing the logic behind the line work. The concept for these sculptures stems from experimentation on a smaller scale eight years prior, beginning with forms that emerged as byproducts of works on paper. Composed in plywood to allow them to maintain the thin profile that characterises Shepherd’s constructions, these works recontextualise the artist’s signature forms in three dimensions.

About the Artist

Known for her richly coloured paintings built with layers of monochromatic enamel, Kate Shepherd’s decades-long exploration of perspectival space investigates the relationship of paintings to their environments; the various reflective surfaces establishing a spatial discourse across the panel, the viewer, and the gallery space. Panels in materials like wood and aluminium that connote the architecture for which the paint is meant form the basis 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. Using methods such as hand painting thin linear constructions and interrupting the surface by sanding the glossy enamel, Shepherd incorporates geometric forms in her work that imply dimensional space on the two-dimensional surface. 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 constantly evolving exploration of colour.

Shepherd has exhibited at museums and galleries across the United States and Europe since 1994. Her most recent museum solo exhibitions include Kate Shepherd: Lineaments , Charlotte and Philip Hanes Art Gallery, Wake Forest University, North Carolina, and Intersections: Relation to and yet not (homage to Mondrian) by Kate Shepherd, Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. Shepherd’s work is featured in numerous museum collections including the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York; Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland; Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, Michigan; Des Moines Art Center, Iowa; Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California; Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Massachusetts; Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Arizona; and Seattle Art Museum, Washington. The artist lives and works in New York City, where she was born in 1961.