Kathryn Keller Larkins

Kathryn Keller Larkins was born in Chicago, Illinois and has been living and working in New York City since 2002. She studied from 2007-2013 under Paul Ching-Bor at the Art Students League of New York, where she developed a distinct aesthetic in her watercolor on paper pieces, creating atmospheric interpretations of urban life. Larkins builds complex surfaces by spattering and layering washes, often sculpting back into the image with lifting and spraying, allowing air to further force or fix the paint. This visible history and agency of the watercolor is harnessed to communicate her chosen themes of joining and departing from a group experience.

Larkins follows artists such as Kara Walker and Jenny Holzer in theuse of a delicate or traditional media to engage viewers in critical questions about what has been built in our culture over time, and to bring out the narrative of the individual within that larger culture. Larkins records her observations about the nature of transportation, the forces that drive both construction and neglect, and the perception of place in these paintings of New York's streets, bridges, neighborhoods, and airports. The works are large in scale and, much like the city, contain detail and destruction and a sense of dynamic motion.

Larkins has received several awards and grants for her painting, including the Art Student League’s Fantasy Fountain Fund grant for travel in 2010, the American Watercolor Society’s Mary Bryan Memorial Medal in 2012, and a chashama Studio Residency in 2015. In 2013, her work was included in North Light Books’ Splash 15: The Best of Watercolor. Larkins has exhibited her paintings across the United States, as well as in Germany and France, and her works are held in private collections globally.