hidell brooks gallery recently took a quick day trip down to charleston to check out the studio of kate long stevenson. we have known kate quite a while and thought she would be a perfect additional to our stable of artists. kate has a wonderful color palette and puts it to good use with deliberately thick brush strokes at the same time leaving lots of raw white canvas around to give them room to breathe. we had a fabulous time visiting with Kate who is the sweetest and lunch at rue de jean was delicious.
kate spends her days painting at redux studios in downtown charleston. redux contemporary art center is a nonprofit organization committed to fostering creativity and the cultivation of contemporary art through diverse exhibitions, subsidized studio space for visual artists, meaningful education programs, and a multidisciplinary approach to the dialogue between artists and their audiences.
expressionist painter kate long stevenson was born and raised in north carolina, and began her professional career while a student at the university of the south. gestural brushstrokes and a passion for color are characteristic to all of her pieces, ranging from figurative paintings to wild abstracts. a life-long lover of music, kate relies on mostly classical compositions to guide her as she builds a painting, layering chords of color over energetic swirls of charcoal and paint.
"it's important to me that my paintings have a subject, despite how non-subjective some can seem. with my nude paintings, the figure is the vehicle that invites you to discover the true subject: the elements--the way it was painted. the abstracts have just skipped that introduction, altogether, but they're still about something--music, tempo, motion and emotion. it all comes from a feeling, but then the challenge is not only to translate that to the canvas but to have it make sense, compositionally."
hidell brooks gallery is thrilled to include paintings by kate long stevenson in their upcoming 15th year anniversary exhibition opening on friday, march 15th from 6-9. we are looking forward to introducing her amazing paintings to our collectors.
