The fourth woman in our #5womenartists series is Katherine (Kat) Schneider.
How do pictures and paint work together? Kat Schneider took great care in combining photographs with a variety of mediums, such as acrylic, tempera, and gouache, to add both literal and figurative layers to her images and to communicate the stories of everyday life. I grappled with the many ways that Schneider worked with both paint and images to shape meaning, but also the ways in which her pictures continue to resonate beyond, and sometimes in spite of, the paint that accompanied them. It’s not that Schneider’s pictures fall silent in the face of paint; it’s rather that Schneider thought with great care about how paint could support, extend, and “fortify” the reach of her images. As Betye Saar once said, “The materials conjure ideas. The ideas conjure images. The images conjure art. The art conjures feelings. The feelings are the goal.”
Schneider graduated from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University; as a photography major, she was fascinated by film stills and drew inspiration from them when creating her images. Many of her early works depict themes of possession and time. To learn more about Kat, visit her website: https://www.katschneider.com/.
