KATE PROTAGE
HOME AND AWAY

J. Rinehart Gallery is delighted to announce Home and Away, our first exhibition of long-time Seattle artist, Kate Protage, and her first solo exhibition in over 6 years.

Best known for her details of individual shape and expressive brush stroke, Home and Away lives in the realm of a series of value changes and textural rhythms. The farther back you step away from the work, the clearer it becomes.

Home and Away, is meant to exist in the grey area between representation and abstraction, where light and solid forms are given equal consideration and are almost interchangeable. The streets, the buildings, the sky, the cars – they’re almost incidental as recognizable. The moments may pass, but the feelings remain.

Kate Protage received her BFA from Smith College, studied at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco before receiving her MFA in Painting with Academic Distinction from Pratt Institute in 2005. She has been creating and showing her work regularly with nearly sold-out exhibitions since 2001 from Seattle, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Princeton, New York and in between.

• ARTIST STATEMENT

  Home and Away
  Exhibition Statement
  
  I have a love/hate relationship with the cities in which I’ve lived. Depending on the time of day, there are two worlds that exist in the same physical space: streets that appear gritty, dirty and depressing by day turn into an environment infused with a strange kind of lush, dark beauty and romance at night. These are the moments that remind me to take a breath, look closer, and recognize that there is still beauty in the world despite all of the chaos that surrounds us. Painting these moments is, in a strange way, my minor act of rebellion.

  While my work is rooted in the real, it’s the junction between sensation and fact that interests me. My paintings and drawings are meant to exist in that grey area between representation and abstraction, where light and solid form are given equal consideration and are almost interchangeable. The streets, the buildings, the sky, the cars – they’re almost incidental as recognizable objects. It’s the detail of an individual shape, an expressive brush stroke, and the way that everything coalesces into a series of value changes and textural rhythms that excites me. The moments may pass, but the feelings remain.