In the Studio
How a painting is built
Nothing arrives finished. Most of what you end up looking at was painted over something else.
The Method
Drawing, then dark, then light
A painting starts as a drawing and then a thin monochrome underpainting — usually burnt umber — that settles the composition and the darks before a single true colour is mixed. It looks like a photograph left too long in the developer, and it is the most important stage.
Colour goes on top of that, thin to thick, over days or weeks. The highlights arrive last, which is why they land where they do.
None of it is fast, and none of it is loose. On her own account the brushwork can be very refined — “the brushwork is in refining the important parts.” Whatever movement a finished painting has was decided long before, in the moment chosen and the way the picture is built around it.
Below are two paintings photographed the whole way through. They are three years apart and could hardly be less alike, and they turn out to share a habit: the person goes in at the end. Everything else is built first, and then somebody arrives to stand in it.
Six Days, 2023
The Shepherd Girl
The girl sat for it. The stone wall, the headland and the weather did not exist.
Three Months, 2026
Maroon Bells
The Colorado peaks, painted from photographs over three months. The lake stays empty until the very end.
A painting is done, Kathy says, when there is nothing else to correct. “It doesn’t always happen. Most times, it doesn’t.”