Meet Katie Crown

Today we’d like to introduce you to Katie Crown.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Katie. So, let’s start at the beginning, and we can move on from there.
I developed an interest in art from a very young age. I had a fascination for berets. I began wearing smocks. I enjoyed splattering my dinner, and I appreciated the aesthetics of the food that I might accidentally drop onto my clothes. I was a pint-sized Jackson Pollock.

My early paintings were quite free, too. Art was a safe way to protest whatever a three-year-old non-conformist needed to express. I remember my delight when the school mistress hung one of my masterpieces on the wall so that my father, who was an artist, would see it when he came to pick me up from my nursery school. I still have the painting, and it’s of a black sheep.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
There was a great deal of turbulence in my family due to divorce. My mother up and left Manhattan Beach, California for the suburbs of Washington D.C. I hated Washington but there were some perks. I loved visiting the National Gallery of Art. I was mesmerized by Van Gogh, Gaugin, Cezanne, and Picasso.

In my teens, I was spellbound by the German Expressionists, chiefly Klee and Kandinsky. I attended a few art schools but earned my BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Tufts University.

I read somewhere that people who decide to become artists for a living are setting themselves up for disaster. A personal struggle is that my father was a well- known watercolor painter and it’s been difficult not to be compared to him. It’s always difficult launching a career in art.

Galleries have very little interest and curiosity in taking in new artists, so new artists have to become champions at elbowing their way into galleries. I found that projecting myself as being less desperate and more confident, plus wearing my beret, helped me propel myself into galleries and museums.

My work has been exhibited in museums and galleries in 12 states and Washington, D.C. In Los Angeles, I show it at TAG Gallery, 5458 Wilshire Boulevard (www.taggallery.net), online examples are at www.katiecrown.net.

We’d love to hear more about what you do.
Watercolor was my dominant means of expression. I painted abstract landscapes in watercolor as well as large, shaped abstract watercolors of people. In the late seventies and early eighties, my husband and I lived in Tucson, Arizona. Arizona was great for doing watercolors. Paintings dried faster than a parched rattlesnake.

I began showing my art in galleries in Tucson, Phoenix and later, Taos, New Mexico. Most of these paintings were abstract watercolors. We moved to California in 2000. I began a series of oil paintings of the South Bay. My beach scenes sported oodles of people. Humor has always been important to me and filling up a beach with multitudes of disaffected, cool people struck me as funny.

I choose subjects that lend themselves to comic situations. I did a succession of paintings and sculptures of beach people. I created large oils of audiences and also ceramic sculptures of audiences that hang on the wall. I painted watercolors of dancers. I painted and sculpted people on escalators. I also sculpted torsos of wacky characters.

What is “success” or “successful” for you?
Finishing a piece of art and considering it well-done spells success for me. I am a tough critic of my own work. I do enjoy having other people get a charge out of my work.

However, even if others love a painting or sculpture, though I’m flattered, that’s not success to me.

Pricing:

• All Shook Up, watercolor, 59 x 47 inches, $2,000
• Clang, watercolor, 22 x 30 inches, $1,600
• Dancers Over LA, watercolor, 30 x 22 inches, $1,600
• Fly Away, watercolor, 47 x 41 inches, $2,000
• Santa Monica Pier No. 2, oil, 62 x 66 inches, $3,000
• Shades, ceramic and wood, 53 x 66 x 6 inches, $2,500
• You Can’t Please Everyone, oil, 49 x 73 inches, $3,000

Contact Info:

• Website: www.katiecrown.net
• Email: katiecrownartist@gmail.com

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