Catherine Walker is an artist and educator, based in New Orleans, Louisiana. Her work references feminine identity, experience, and the internalization of feminine aesthetics; how they are formed, manipulated, and pressed into the fabric of human understanding. She holds a Bachelor degree in Interior Design and a MA from NYU Steinhardt Department of Art and Art Professions. She has exhibited in New York, Washington, DC, Houston, and New Orleans. Committed to empowering marginalized youth through art and visual expression, Catherine has worked with young artists across the country. She recently co-founded an organization called Sketch Basin, which provides college level art courses to students attending high schools in New Orleans offering little to no art programming.
“My current work synthesizes two traditions in order to facilitate an emotional dialogue about whatever it means to be - to look, feel, act - feminine, and what it means for the feminine to take up space. I reappropriate the soak-stain process, using it to build thin fluid layers of paint into “feminine” forms inspired by post-war couture. The result is a juxtaposition of the delicate and ethereal with vibrant viscerality. These paintings are personal. An expression of longing, they harbor anger and celebration simultaneously; they allow for rage while celebrating what is large and open. Through them, I seek permission to release a muffled need and desire to take up space. To be noticed, admired, wanted.
My painting process is as fluid as my paintings appear; an improvisational dance of action and reaction, as I work to connect with a segment of human experience that is mercurial rather than logical or predictable. Rather than a space for social commentary or criticism, they are an inner pursuit of an illusive or estranged identity.”
Selected Showings
Marks Of Time Fourth Wall Gallery, New Orleans LA, Upcoming 2022
Awakening + Furor Roaring Artist Gallery, Virtual Exhibition 2022
Group Work, Spillman Blackwell Gallery, New Orleans LA, 2022
Illusive Womxnity Mont Art House, Houston, TX, Upcoming October 2021
Group Work, Spillman Blackwell, New Orleans, LA 2021
Tidal 454 Julia Street, New Orleans, LA 2020
She Mont Art House, Houston, TX 2019
Kerlerec House New Orleans, LA 2016 - 2019
Fem and Flutter French Quarter Film House, New Orleans, LA 2015
Terrestrial French Quarter Film House, New Orleans, LA 2015
Art for Africa: A Fundraiser Personal Residence, Washington, DC 2010
Feminine Presence Menocaul Studio, Washington, DC 2010
MA Thesis Exhibition Commons Gallery, New York, NY 2009
Truth and Beauty Commons Gallery, New York, NY 2009
Publications
All SHE Makes Issue 2 Curated Work, 2021
Antenna::Signals Live Action Art Magazine, New Orleans, LA 2019
Teaching
Sketch Basin June 2019 - Present, New Orleans, LA
Walter L Cohen College Prep High School January 2015 - June 2019 New Orleans, LA
Michele Clark Magnet High School September 2013 - June 2014 Chicago, IL
Mary Gage Peterson Elementary School September 2012 - May 2013 Chicago, IL
Luke C. Moore Alternative High School September 2009 - August 2012 Washington, DC
Design
Davis Carter Scott September 2003 - August 2007 McLean, Virginia