Announcing Kate Protage’s solo exhibition, Home and Away

Announcing Kate Protage’s exhibition, Home and Away at J. Rinehart Gallery

(Seattle, WA) – November 2, 2022 – 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. Home and Away will be on view online at www.jrinehartgallery.com and in the gallery December 1 - 23, 2022, with the Opening Reception held in the gallery First Thursday, December 1st from 5-8pm.

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.

Of her work, Protage says: “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 the chaos that surrounds us. Painting these moments is, in a strange way, my minor act of rebellion.”