In Katie Knoeringer’s drawn and painted worlds, empirical coordinates intermingle with dreams to create a sublime and subtlety strange art all her own. Representational and abstract zones battle and blend in invigorating ways that articulate a unique visual vocabulary. Objects, animals and people playfully slip between idioms. She is an artist digging deep into ambiguity and striking gold.
Knoeringer was raised in a creative family and has not stopped drawing since childhood. This youthful fascination still informs her growth as a creator. While on the train or in a bar, her sketchbook is usually on hand to capture inspiring moments. Recently, she has been studying the relationship between drawing and painting by applying washes that create a lively interaction with the lines beneath.
Currently, she is imaginatively capturing covert environments of decay and solitude in Philadelphia. Mosquitoes posed one of the practical challenges she faced this summer. “I spent most of the summer drawing different portions of the backyard shared by my house and a couple of the adjoining houses on my block. I was crawling through bushes with a drawing board so I could sit and study the junk cars and old flowerpots,” she says. “It was so quiet and kind of wild feeling. I would put on socks, long pants and a cardigan and douse myself in bug spray to be able to sit for a few hours and draw. It’s pretty exciting for me, finding little hidden places like that in a city.”
Outsider artists like Henry Darger and James Castle intrigue this hard-working artist, and she is enthusiastic about the paintings of Neo Rauch. While the influences of these two poles are evident in her work, Knoeringer uses daydreams, visionary technique and expert editing to land her work in a captivating aesthetic destination.
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