Katie Kiley

biography  |  artists listing

b. 1951, Decatur, Illinois

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

2005 Venus Envy, Midcoast Bucktown Gallery, Davenport, IA
2004 Kiley & Koiso, Midcoast Gallery, LeClaire, IA
2003 Printmaker's Traveling Show: The Prairie, Grinell, IA
Constructing the Figure, Augustana College, Rock Island, IL
Katie Kiley: Conversations, Quigley Gallery, Clarke College, Dubuque, IA
2000 Gossamer Veils, Figge-Moss, Stony Brook School, Stony Brook, NY
1998 Kiley: Paintings, Drawings and Prints, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
Girls! Girls! Girls!, Jacqueline Ross Gallery, Chicago, IL
1995 Whiskey Gods and Cold Black Beads: Drawings, Paintings and Prints, Alfons Gallery, Milwaukee, WI
1988 Katie Kiley: Drawings, Prints and Paintings, Muchnic Gallery, Atchison, KS

ARTIST'S STATEMENT

Above all else, I love to draw the figure. I delight in the infinite beauty of the human form: the bones and muscles, the skin and hair, the intricacies of the eyes, ears and the mouth. I believe, as the poet Rumi wrote nearly 800 years ago, "The human being is a conversation about the nature of the soul." I watch for those intimate gestures that attest to an intrinsic communication that needs no words: moving, leaning, touching, and trembling. Unlike the fleeting spoken word, the visual hand sign is more permanent. And unlike the written word, the gesture is more universal.

Horn Quintet in E-flat Major
I had my daughters Julia (violin) and Joanne (cello) pose for this piece along with some of their musician friends, costuming them in vintage garb to suggest ancient Greek style of dress. I arranged the first manuscript page of Mozart's Horn Quintet around the vase, adjusting the size in proportion with the diameter of the vase. I then faithfully copied the manuscript first in pencil then in ink as I did with the figures, choosing not to add color because the patterning and detail in the figures was "color" enough.