Kat O’Connor, Girl Next Door, 2021, acrylic on aluminum (ACP), image courtesy of the artist.
Best in show: Kat O’Connor, ArtsWorcester Biennial winner July 16 – October 16, 2022
W
orcester artist Kat O’Connor, winner of the Sally R. Bishop Best in Show Prize at the 2021 ArtsWorcester Biennial, will open a solo exhibition at WAM this summer. The recipient of numerous grants and awards, including a Mass Cultural Council Fellowship, O’Connor has shown her work nationwide for nearly 30 years. Her paintings and drawings are included in many private and corporate collections.
In her early work, O’Connor often depicted explorations of light and shape in scenes from her frequent travels to Greece and the American southwest. For over a decade, however, water has been her primary muse and artistic focus. Her recent body of work, which includes the Biennial winner, Dreaming of Snell’s Window, delves into the world above and below the surface of swimming pools. These almost otherworldly paintings show graceful, fluid
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portraits of women—diving, swimming, floating—from the unusual perspective of someone underwater. The figures have a dream-like quality, gently distorted by ripples, bubbles, and reflections as they move through the water. In describing her creative approach, O’Connor says she seeks to explore the way realism can push into and through abstraction. “My paintings capture what happens in a split second of weightlessness, a momentary realism in which rip currents tear away at the abyss and produce images and shapes that were once imperceptible,” she explains. This is evident when the artist incorporates ethereal, celestial light and weightlessness into portraits. Figures swim below or in the midst of an expansive night sky of stars, planets, and galaxies—an adroit melding of the earthly experience of swimming with the infinite vastness of the universe.
When announcing O’Connor as the Best in Show winner, Biennial juror Beth C. McLaughlin, Artist Director and Chief Curator at the Fuller Craft Museum, cited the artist’s skillful use of lush surfaces, a vibrant color palette, and energetic compositions. “In her paintings, light is the subject matter and in the case of her water paintings, the ancient dance of light and water take center stage,” McLaughlin said. We look forward to showing Kat O’Connor’s work this summer—and giving WAM visitors the opportunity to experience and delight in her luminous underwater worlds. This exhibition is organized in partnership with ArtsWorcester. It is funded in part by the Don and Mary Melville Contemporary Art Fund and Spear Fund for Public Programs.
