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Creativity Q+A with Katherine Corden


Traverse City painter Katherine Corden, 33, has “a short attention span when it comes to [her] painting.” Hard to believe given the extensive, practical evidence of her steady focus: on her process, her making, and the many ways she lets the world know about it. In depicting her favorite subjects — groups of people gathered, long undulating roads — her approach is to favor gesture, light, and color, then leave the rest to the viewer’s imagination.

This interview was conducted in November 2024 by Sarah Bearup-Neal, GAAC Gallery Manager, and edited for clarity.

Pictured: Katherine Corden


Describe the medium in which you work.

Right now I primarily work in acrylic paint on wood panels. My work occasionally will embrace mixed-media elements, so I’ll use pencil, charcoal, pastels — often on top of my acrylic paint. I frequently paint in gouache. And something I’m hoping to experiment with this year is oil painting. Always trying new things.

Why oil paint?

I have a very short attention span when it comes to my painting. I just want to continue moving onto the next phase of it — in that way, acrylic is really nice because it dries so quickly. In the way I want to embrace a looser depiction of my figures or subjects, I think oil paint has those softer edges I’m looking for. Also, oil paint colors have a more intense vibrancy to them. It’s hard to achieve that in acrylic paint. It’ll be an experiment. We’ll see.

Do you need someone to help guide you through the basics of oil painting? Or, have you had some experience with it?

I’ve had a little experience with it. One of my studio mates, Alyssa Smith, had an oil painting workshop in our studio last year that I attended. It’s nice to have friends I can [ask questions of]. The daunting thing about oil paint is it is more hazardous, and you want to make sure you’re using the right materials to minimize your toxic exposure.

Where’s your studio?

Studio view.

In downtown Traverse City [Michigan], at the Tru Fit Trouser Building. I feel so lucky to have found that space. I found it shortly after we’d moved here [from Wisconsin] in 2019. I’d been going to Vada Color to get print reproductions of my work, and VADA Color is located in the Tru Fit campus. I met Eric Gerstner, who owns and renovated the building. The old Habitat For Humanity ReStore was moving out, and he had this enormous space available. That was way too much space — I think it was about 9,000 square feet. I told [Eric] what I was looking for, and we came up with breaking up the space into a casual studio set up — our walls don’t go up to the ceiling so we can talk with each other across the wall.

In your November 14 blog post you wrote: “Like most of my paintings, the photos in this folder are from scenes found in my life (often mundane, but occasionally novel, for me at least …)” Talk about that a little bit.

Looking To Good Times, acrylic on wood panel, 36″ h x 48″ w, 2022, Katherine Corden.

I’m not unique in that I draw a lot of inspiration from my personal life. Today, we’re so lucky because we constantly have a camera with us, in our smart phone. Living in Northern Michigan, I feel lucky that we spend a lot of our time outside. What I gravitate toward, and what I’m most known for, are my beach paintings. I spend a lot of time on the beach in the summer, and feel lucky to do that. On the beach you have this perfect set-up — if you enjoy painting figures, which I do — that creates a still life for you. The sand is a neutral backdrop, you have this amazing light source with nothing obstructing it, and you get these interesting shadow shapes created on the uneven [surface of] the sand. I’m very inspired when I’m at the beach. It’s usually just people sitting on towels, or talking to each other, or shaking a towel out. I find the movement and the change in light and the patterns [cast] by everything you bring with you to the beach to be really interesting — both from a color theory standpoint because you have all these interesting colors and values going on; and from a composition standpoint because you have people sitting down and standing up, and there’s not really any other time in your day-to-day life that you’ll find that many figures [in the same place] unless you’re at life-drawing class. I used to live in Chicago, and I’d sketch people sitting on the L train; but at the beach you’re lucky that most people are in their swimsuits. You get really good light on the bare figure.

That is closer to the life-drawing context.

Yes. There’s not so many layers of clothing [at the beach]. It’s the perfect place to be looking at the figure if that’s what you’re interested in. Lately, I’m trying to explore some of those concepts of color and light; I’m taking a break from the figure. I’m looking at buildings [and other artifacts of contemporary life].

Island View Road, acrylic on wood panel, 36″ h x 48″ w, 2024, Katherine Corden

In your November 21 blog post, you featured a painting that is going to be hung at Farm Club in Traverse City. That painting is a good example of what you’re saying about reducing the elements of your painting to shape, and color.

That’s something I’m always working on. I haven’t arrived there yet by any means: I enjoy the process of painting so much that it’s hard for me to step away. What I probably need to be doing is to work on multiple pieces [simultaneously] so I can take a break, and let something breathe, then come back and reassess it.

One of the distinguishing characteristics of the figures you paint is that, facially, there’s no information: no eyes, there’s a shape of a nose, of a mouth; but for all intents and purposes, the face is a blank canvas. When you remove those things, you’re asking the viewer to pay more attention to other things. Your figures’ gestures give the viewer a lot of information. In one of your paintings, Extended Family, a figure is standing, and there’s a connection between her and another figure, and that said a lot. Talk about the absence of information in the face.

I’ve talked to so many people about this because it’s a common comment people make. Everybody has a different take on it. This isn’t why I’m intentionally leaving the face out of it; but a lot of people have connected with my work because it is easier for them to imagine that they might be one of the people [in the painting]. I [also] think about how the gestures are really telling the story. When I’m just figure drawing with charcoal my favorite kind of figure drawing is gesture drawing. I love trying to quickly capture the essence of the person in the gesture. I find the looseness of

Extended Family, acrylic on wood panel, 36″ h x 48″ w, 2024, Katherine Corden

that to be a little bit mysterious. Something I’m more interested in than the anatomy is the colors I’m using. I’m trying to create more of a story with color. The intent is not to get distracted by details. Something I’m always trying to challenge myself with is: How can I achieve what I’m trying to achieve with less detail? It’s a tricky thing. I’m always trying to edit. I’ve heard this from writers before, and it sounds awful: You have to kill your babies. You have to be willing to get rid of your best line in your story, or your best mark in your painting in order to move the piece forward. Sometimes you get so hung up on a detail you thought was so brilliant, and then the rest of your painting suffers as you work around it trying to make this one detail work. If you look at my work up close, you’ll see there are a lot of layers, which I end up liking. I often will be figuring out my final composition, [then] end up painting over an entire section of work because it’s too much. It’s like taking off jewelry before you leave the house.

What makes the figure a compelling subject for you?

I’ve always been fascinated with the figure and human anatomy — perhaps this also explains the pull to my first career as a physical therapist. I really enjoy the challenge the figure offers the artist: always changing, never the same. Finally achieving a likeness of line and weight is so satisfying. I love the release of quick gesture drawing and also the meditation that comes with longer painted portraits. It is a fantastic canvas to explore color and light, two things I find endless inspiration in.

Did you receive any formal training in visual art? 

I grew up with a mom who is an art teacher. From an early age I was exposed to art class, and art work, and we had lots of art in our home. I’m grateful I went through a public school system [in Grosse Pointe, Michigan] that had really fabulous art teachers. I graduated from high school in 2009. In 2008, when I was applying to colleges, I was fearful of applying to art school. I grew up in a community where there weren’t a lot of role models that would have shown me what a career in the arts would look like. I had my mom, who was an art teacher, telling me that it would be hard to get a job as an art teacher. Between my own fear and the adults around me, I thought I’d just continue to do art as a hobby, and study something else. I ended up going to the University of Michigan, and became a physical therapist, which I did for six years. When I graduated from physical therapy school, I started painting again. Obviously, I didn’t have a family yet, and I didn’t have to study anymore, so I had time to do what I wanted to do after I came home from work. I started sharing my paintings on social media. I made a website. It was fun, and I made some extra money. It worked out that Chicago — where I went to grad school — had a lot of art resources and programs to attend in the evenings. I met some other cool, young women who had started their own careers — it was the first time I’d met people who didn’t have traditional careers, and that really opened my eyes. I continued to work as a physical therapist, and paint in my free time, for a long time before I felt confident enough to stop my work as a therapist.

What was the light bulb that went on in your head that told you to leave physical therapy behind, and jump into this other thing?

One of the blessing of working as a physical therapist is that it’s very flexible. [Kathryn moved with her new husband, also a physical therapist, to Wisconsin and began to work part-time.] I knew we weren’t going to be living in Wisconsin forever, so I told myself I was going to take the next year to really figure out if I want to really do this art thing. Am I capable of doing this as a career and generate a living from it? I invested in teaching myself how to run a business, and that was daunting. I didn’t have any education in how to run a business. I joined some online communities that were teaching just that. It was an impactful year. We moved to Traverse City [and she worked part-time at Munson Hospital]. I covered maternity leaves, and worked [in her studio] on the weekends. We didn’t have any kids yet, and I found the [Tru Fit] studio. I was making enough money from my art; but I was fearful of letting go all the work I’d done to become a physical therapist. Having kids helped. It was clear it didn’t make sense to be doing all of these things. I slowly took less and less hours at the hospital, and painting more and more. My last day of work as a physical therapist was in 2022.

How unusual is it, amongst the people with whom you hang, that you’re not just artists but you’re also small business owners?

That’s a good question. Most of my friends understand because they followed my work, and it’s something I talk about fairly often — the business side of my work, my job. I find when I meet new people [it’s a challenge] to describe what I do. An artist friend gave me a piece of advice. When she tells people what she does, she says that she owns a small art business, and she’s the artist.

I think that’s indicative of how few people have an understanding of creative work. We all know what a dentist looks like, and how that work works. I wonder, though, if the perception of  people who do creative work is that they sit around and wait for a lightning bolt to hit, then there’s a frenzy of activity, and at the of it — wah lah! — there’s a masterpiece — when what creative people are doing is work. A job.

Tools and materials.

That was honestly one of the hard things during my transition from physical therapy, was telling people that I’m an artist. “Physical therapy” is an easy answer, and then you can move on. When you tell people you’re an artist, they go, Huh? One of the things I’ve had to practice doing is trying not to imagine what their thoughts are, that they’re thinking I’m so privileged that I can just paint all day and not have to worry about making money; but I don’t know what they’re thinking, and it’s none of my business. If they have questions, I’m always happy to answer them.  The dentist’s office is a perfect example. A dentist’s office was the first place I ever told someone I was an artist. It’s a very low-stakes place where [the hygienist or dentist] is making small talk with you, and I decided that I was just going to go ahead and see what happened. They are usually so interested in [her answer] because it’s so different from what they do.

Let’s talk about the business end of the work you do.

This book cover is from Katherine’s 2020 painting Pool Bar.

With my work, I have to think ahead an entire year. I do work with several galleries [in Northern Michigan, and Alabama]; but I have a good-sized audience and quite a few subscribers on my email list, so I’m able to represent myself. The thing I found challenging about working with galleries is that you need to have a steady supply of work, inventory. I am often able to sell pieces on my own, through my website, which is preferable because I get to keep 100 percent of the proceeds. I also have had shows at my studio in Traverse City; but most of my sales have come through my website. As my kids [ages 4 and 2] get older, and I’m able to produce a larger volume of work, I’d love to work with more galleries to extend the reach of my work, and find new audiences. The other part of my business is I license work in a couple different ways: through a couple online galleries that curate reproduction work by artists; and then, recently, I licensed my work for a book cover, which was a big dream of mine. It comes out in January.

Talk about one of the bigger projects you undertook in 2024.

The mural is at Bryant Park in Traverse City. It’s on the restroom building, a good-sized brick building [16’ x 30’], and I painted three sides of it. I was chosen through the Traverse City Arts Commission. A friend of mine sent me the application. She knew the building was on the beach, and I paint a lot of beach scenes. And, it also just happens to be two blocks from our house. The idea I pitched was I wanted to make a beach scene that appears as though you’re  looking through the building. You’d see the horizon line in the background; but the focus of the painting would be the people who frequent the beach. There are little kids playing, and bigger kids tossing their towels, adults in the background skipping stones or walking. The fun thing about a mural is that there couldn’t be a lot of details; it would be too much work at that scale. That forced me to edit. I used a limited color palette, which was a fun challenge — I was trying to re-purpose the same Sherwin Williams color as well as for someone else’s face. The colors are very much inspired by the color seen at the park.

And you’ve done how many murals on the sides of buildings?

Katherine’s mural on the Bryant Park bathhouse in Traverse City, Michigan.

That was my first and only mural.

Having it be a much larger “canvas,” but a canvas that’s three sided, how do you take what you know about painting and transpose it to the surface and that format?

A lot of my paintings on wood panel are larger. A common size is 36” x 48”. For the mural, I used a strategy I’ve used before. I created a grid [on the source sketch], and then gridded out the mural with sidewalk chalk, and then I took it square-by-square and enlarged the image.

What’s your favorite tool?

My spray bottle. I’m constantly spraying down my palette [with water]. This is one of the reason why I think I’ll like working with oil: I like a fluid consistency with the paint. I also use a palette scraper I couldn’t live without.

Do you use a sketch book?

I do use a sketch book. I haven’t been able to travel; but when I do travel I love bringing a sketch book with me. It’s a great way to do a little plein air work. I have brought my sketch book with me to the beach before; but in this phase of my life I’m at the beach with toddlers. I need to make the time to get to the beach by myself.

When you’re at the beach — or, wherever — are you more inclined to use your camera to record an idea?

Yes. I think if I was by myself I’d use a sketch book; but right now it’s so much faster for me to use my camera, and then I can put my camera away and be in the moment with my family.

How does social media fit into your practice?

Social media is a tool for marketing my work, and connecting with people who are interested in my work, connecting with other artists, connecting with businesses that might want to work with me. It’s both a networking tool, and a marketing tool. I also find myself inspired by by all the artists locally and around the world who share their work on social media. I think that social media has so many terrible things about it; but one of the nice things is if you’re looking for inspiration, you have access to people you’ve never heard of. In terms of pursuing this career, I’ve been motivated  by watching other artists flourish on social media — either because I’ve become friends with them, or they’ve been a role model; you can watch them and see how they’re doing it.

How does living in Northern Michigan inform and influence your creative work?

Beach portraits.

As I’ve mentioned: painting the beaches here. It informs my subject matter in a lot of ways. The community up here has been very supportive, mostly because there are so many people I’ve met who are around my age, who are doing similar work. That’s the real-life version of what I was describing on social media. There are people who I’m becoming friends with, and people who work in my studio with me who are artists, or writers, or making music. A lot of people who live up here work for themselves — there’s not a lot of industry — and that has been encouraging, that support and network of people who can help each other, answer questions, motivate each other, inspire each other. Hopefully, the area is getting recognized for that, and people are supporting the artists up here, because there’s a growing number of them.

Who has had the greatest and most lasting influence on your work and practice?

I don’t know if I can pinpoint a single person. Because of the expansiveness that the online community gives you, I think there have been a lot of women, who are older than me from around the country, who have done really impressive things with their career that inspire me. Sarah Madiera Day from Maine. There are a bunch of artists from South Carolina who taking their work to levels I don’t think people thought were possible. And, one of my mentors, Emily Jeffords had a big impact on me. Many of these people are moms, which has become more and more important to me. I look to other working moms to figure out how they do it. Often it feels more and more challenging to balance everything. I have a good collection of books. I love looking at the work of Fairfield Porter, Matisse, Richard Dibenkorn. I just got a book by Josef Albers. He’s been inspiring me to focus more on color, and see where that takes me.

Where or to whom do you go when you need honest feedback about your work?

Because my mom is an art teacher, I always feel good asking her questions. She gives me honest feedback, and it feels like a very safe space because she’s my mom. My good friend Brianne Farley has a studio in the [Tru Fit Trouser] building, and we’ve been working next to each other since 2020. She has given me good feedback. Our work is very different. I’m a large-scale painter and she’s a children’s book illustrator, but she did go to grad school in art. I have a group of three girlfriends who are artists, living in different states, and we meet on Zoom about once a month. We critique each other’s work, and talk about what we’re struggling with — any business or art thing we’re going through. We have a text thread, and that’s very valuable.

Sisterhood is very powerful in your practice. You have a whole range of female people who are friends and mentors, and they all feed into your practice in one way or another. Is that intentional?

The Fika paintings.

I don’t think it’s intentional; but one of the big, big blessings of my life is I’ve always found really good girlfriends; from a young age, I’ve had really good girlfriends. I think I’m just naturally trained to seek their help when I need it. That also has been a theme in my work in the past, too. A couple years ago I did a collection where I asked a bunch of my friends here to meet up at Farm Club. I took photos of them having drinks together, sitting and talking to each other. I used those photos as reference photos for paintings. The collection was titled Fika, which is a Scandinavian term for enjoying a drink or treat with someone without distraction. You’re fully present, enjoying that time together. We were trying to tell a story of female friendship, and being present, and the importance of that.

What do you believe is the visual artist’s role in the world?

I just went to a talk last week with Kate Korrock, and we talked a lot about this at the discussion [November 13 Caffeinated Conversations program sponsored by the Northwest Michigan Arts and Culture Network]. One of my takeaways is there are so many purposes art can have, and to limit art to having one purpose would be such a disservice to the practice and expression of it all. There’s a place for having art that makes people uncomfortable, and questioning their beliefs, wanting to explore new topics. I think art has a powerful way of helping people escape, or feel grounded, or calm. In general, [at the November 13 program] we talked a lot about how art helps us make sense of the world around us, that it’s a reflection of the world through that artist’s lens. But then the viewer is interpreting the art through their own life experience.

Is the maker’s role in the world to be a provocateur, or a storyteller, or a bringer of beauty?

Through Lines, acrylic on wood panel, 36 h x 48″ w, 2023, Katherine Corden. 

One of the nice things about living in the time we do, all of the above is needed. I think it’s important for museums and larger communities or cities or people who are going to be investors in the arts to sponsor or encourage more provocative art. In terms of having an artist producing purely provocative art would require that the artist be privileged. You’re running a small business, so you constantly trying to balance your perspective with: How am I going to make a living from this work? How am I going to make artwork that I enjoy, and I think other people will put in their homes? As [one’s] career grows, and [one has] more security and feel more loyalty from a wider base of collector, then [the artist] has more privileges and freedom to explore more provocative work. It’s important to have beautiful work that people can escape into; but people need all different types of art.

How do you feed/fuel/nurture your creativity?

Something I’ve found really important is exercising, and getting outside to exercise. That helps everything in my life, and it definitely helps my creativity. My preferred form of exercise is probably going on a run, which I’m not always able to do. When I’m running or on a walk outside is when I’ll get ideas, and have more energy to execute said ideas.


Read more about Katherine Corden here.

Sarah Bearup-Neal develops and curates Glen Arbor Arts Center exhibitions. She maintains a studio practice focused on fiber and collage.

 

 

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