Artist Statement

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Katy Kidd. Gen X girl, checking the American Dream, religion, privilege, the luck of the draw and now what? My collection is an opportunity to look at everything I thought I knew and to take in the fact that I know nothing and nothing makes sense. I grew up here. This place looks nothing like it did, and I am the Prodigal daughter. I got to do the American Dream and it came up flat. I question everything now. None of this makes any sense and I want my work to reflect this idea that the world is in fact incomprehensible and there is, in general, no “right” way to live.

 

For the past 30 years, I have been creating art in an attempt to explore diversity around the planet. From worship to war, and the common thread of those two contradictory ideas; how we pray, how we live, the debris of mankind and the resilience of the plant world. I hope to inspire the viewer to think outside of their comfort zone.I use components of figurative paintings layering and objects against altered landscapes, using imagery I have collected while living my life and the search for meaning around the globe.

 

A critic has said of Katy Kidd’s work that it juxtaposes “a certain deliberate flatness reminiscent of Andy Warhol’s Brillo Boxes, which play with two- and three-dimensional allusions in Pop Art, with a street-art sensibility as direct as the “Smack” and “Pow!” graphics in a comic book. In Kidd’s paintings, clashing themes of the oppression of women, especially vis a vis religious dogma, and the institutionalized racism and classicism inherent to 21st-century global capitalism, point to the hypocrisy behind cultural systems that tout such ideals as kindness and compassion.” Kidd’s content is both tongue in cheek and deadly serious.

 

I employ the techniques of painting, paper lithography, woodblock and linoleum prints, monoprints, large scale murals, wheatpaste installments, digital art, photography, screen printing and have also been known to dabble in high and low fire ceramics for a spell.

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My materials over the years mostly consist of oil, water based, auto, house and spray paint. I use water and oil based inks for printmaking. l work on paper, wood & walls. 

 

Kidd’s work is in collections at the Denver and Memphis International Airports, The Lama Foundation, and the US Embassy at Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Her paintings have been shown in California, Washington, New Mexico, Colorado, Wisconsin, Oregon, and Madrid, Spain. In addition to this, her murals and street art have been exhibited in the Harwood Art Museum, Kenya, Uganda, Jamaica, Spain and multiple states in the US.

 

Since 2021 Katy has lived and worked in the historic Five Points neighborhood in downtown Denver.