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Katherine McCarty

A native of Charlotte, NC, Katherine is a graduate of Salem College in Winston-Salem, NC with a B.A. in Sociology and has her Masters of Science in Community Counseling from Georgia State University in Atlanta.  A course in Art Therapy convinced her to pursue art as her own therapy and became her focus in graduate school.  Subsequently, Katherine completed the foundation courses in 2-D art at Georgia State and soon attended a printmaking class at Penland School of Craft.  Longing to return to the North Carolina mountains, she enrolled in the 8-week concentration in clay at Penland in 2000.  Currently, Katherine resides in Spruce Pine, Mitchell County, NC near the Blue Ridge Parkway, and has a home studio and a private counseling practice.

Katherine has taken ongoing community classes and workshops in clay, printmaking, oil painting, and mixed media.  Drawing inspiration from the many beautiful mountain vistas, she enjoys Plein air painting and photography and uses these as reference material for larger canvases.  Her instructors have included: Ellen White, Sally Hughes Smith, John MacDonald, Scott Boyle, Andy Braitman, and Cindy Walton (cold wax).  Four years of ongoing classes in advanced studio painting with Curt Butler and Anne Harkness at Butler Studios in Gastonia, NC convinced her to pursue art seriously and to return to the realm of art therapy and abstract expressionism. Most recently, Katherine has taken online coursework with Nancy Hillis, MD (Studio Journey), studied with Tonya D. Lee and Pinkney Herbert at Penland School of Craft, and participated in Jodie King’s “Honest Art” workshop in Sedona.

Katherine is a member of Blue Ridge Fine Arts Guild (BRAG), NC Plein Air Painters, Toe River Valley Plein Air Painters, and currently serves on the board of Toe River Arts in Mitchell/Yancey Counties of Western North Carolina.

“When approaching the blank canvas and entering the terra incognita, a door opens to the mystery and the adventure of intuitive expression which the conventional spoken language cannot touch.  Applying the foundation principles of color, value, line, shape, form, texture, and space – my paintings, largely abstract in nature, reflect an underlying visual order and harmony. Oftentimes, I’ll get an underlying message of what’s coming up for me personally or through the collective unconscious.

Art is transformative and becomes an evolutionary self-portrait. The process of applying paint to canvas brings immense pleasure, often leading to the dreaded insecurities that arise within me; however, an ongoing curiosity compels me to find harmony and resolution.  My desire is to create expressive, pleasing, authentic art. “

“Every artist dips his brush in his own soul and paints his own nature into his pictures.”

–Henry Ward Beecher