American (1961 -)

Kate Shepherd is known for her richly colored paintings built with layers of monochromatic enamel and especially for her exploration of perspectival space. The various reflective surfaces establish a spatial discourse across the panel, to the viewer and within the space housing the painting. Being situationally reactive to light and movement, the paintings take on sculptural characteristics in their constant change. We will caution that her use of reflective enamel makes her work difficult to photograph.

Shepherd's unique union of drawing and painting, her adherence to the laws of linear perspective, and the subdued shifts in tone and luminosity that create hypothetical, architectural spaces into which viewers are pulled have been signature ingredients in an oeuvre that never feels prosaic or formulaic. She is very much a "process" painter and the getting to "here" from "there" warrants its own discussion.

Her work is featured in numerous museum collections, including The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York; Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts; The Microsoft Art Collection; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York.