A Note From Kathy

This month, Kathryn Markel Fine Arts will be celebrating our 40th year in business. We sat down with Kathy to look back over her career and share her thoughts about the art world today. 

Name your five favorite artists.

Now, how many of them were women? The National Museum of Women in the Arts guesses that there weren't too many, if any, female artists on your list. So, for Women's History Month, they've started a campaign called #5womenartists to get people talking about unsung artists. Since we are five women working at a gallery where roughly 80% of the artists we represent are female, it's a cause we feel passionate about. Here are five of our favorite women artists:

Kathryn Markel takes a moment to reflect on her favorite painters and what they say about her. 

The more you look at art the more you understand yourself.  For example, I rarely respond to art with harsh gesture and color.  It feels angry to me. But, others might appreciate the same anger I see and find it liberating, Where I may see the painting's energy as enervating, they could see it as exciting.

I've never cared for surrealism either.  My brother used to recite his dreams at the breakfast table and, although I loved him, I hated to hear about his dreams.  Surrealism reminds me of those arbitrary stories.

The fact is that, our reactions  to everything in life are colored by our individual histories and physiology.  There is always a dance between the stimulus and the stimulated. I rarely analyze why I like or dislike a dress, a taste, a person, or a wallpaper.   But I always think about what it is in my personality that makes me react in a particular way to a piece of art.