Today we’d like to introduce you to Katherine Zhukovsky.
Hi Katherine, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
My journey into the arts was a bit of a weird one. I actually got my degree in biology; everyone in my family went into math, science, and medicine until my fellow American-raised cousins and I went rogue and decided to follow more artistic pursuits. Science is a creative field too though, and artistic processes can be quite scientific. In many ways, I’m still doing the same job I was when I worked in the lab.
Besides, it wasn’t a complete left turn. All those mathematicians and scientists and doctors in my family are incredibly talented artists and writers in their own right. I grew up with Chagall and Kandinsky and Dali on the walls, season tickets to the opera and the ballet, trips to museums, and every kind of afterschool art program. Art and literature and film were always really valued in my house, I feel incredibly grateful to have been exposed to so much history and culture from such an early age.
After I left the sciences, I sort of waffled about working odd jobs, trying on different things to see what would fit. It wasn’t until everything shut down in 2020 that I picked up the painting I’d set aside since childhood. I’ve been incredibly lucky to see so much success in such a short time, I’m still amazed every time a gallery shows my work or I stumble into another incredible artistic community. Los Angeles has such a warm and welcoming art scene, it really feels like we’re building something cool here.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I’ve always believed as a matter of philosophy that when it’s right, it’s easy. That doesn’t mean you’ll never have to do difficult things, it certainly doesn’t mean you can live a life free of suffering. But when you’re on the right track with something it really feels like it just… flows. Like resistance itself steps out of your way and everything is just *happening* while you’re along for the ride.
That’s probably a really unsatisfying answer, the sort of unbearable thing you might find embroidered in hideous font on a throw pillow. But I don’t know, I don’t internalize rejection and I absolutely revel in every little success, so the journey so far has been whimsical and magical and full of fun surprises. The things that don’t work out don’t work out, and the things that do are amazing!
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I make oil, acrylic, and pastel expressionist paintings. I tried my best to resist pastels, actually, because they’re terribly impractical on the scales and surfaces I like to work on, but it turns out I’m quite an impractical person, and the heart wants what it wants. My process is very intuitive, I rarely plan anything in advance. I just reach for a color that’s speaking to me in the moment and start forming these distorted feminine figures. I’m really interested in joints and bony protrusions, but it’s always the colors that lead the way. I like to think I’m building a new mythology (or channeling one anyway); one that incorporates the feminine and the queer and the Jewish and the diasporic that is otherwise erased in the Western canon. I’m something of a feminized Fauve, a Fauve Femme?
If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
Art, like life, is a team sport. I mean that quite literally; making is a process of the body, often a physically demanding one, and requiring an athleticism we don’t often acknowledge. Artists are prone to overuse injuries, to strains and sprains and sometimes more drastic bodily breakdowns both acute and chronic. Art is a sport. And though we tend to imagine lonely, isolated painters locked in a drafty room, painting in solitude… in practice this is very rarely the case. Famous artists have entire studio teams, of course, plus gallery and curatorial support, auction house staff, an entire industry just for shipping…. but even those of us in the early stages of our careers rely on teamwork. I’ve borrowed garages, tools, trucks, cameras, lights, muscle power, and man hours and lent the same in turn. And that’s before the work ever even sets foot in a gallery. I think that’s what I’m most grateful for, growing up as an immigrant in the US: the understanding that none of us can survive on our own, that infrastructure is meant to be shared, that in order for things to get done we must do them together.
Contact Info:
- Website: chasethesunlight.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/chasethesunlight
