Meet Katharine Kuharic | painter, artist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Katharine Kuharic and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Katharine, can you walk us through the thought-process of starting your business?
Im an artist and have been working with galleries primarily in New York for over 35 years. I started selling paintings when I was only 21 years old and never approached making them as starting a business. I wanted to make paintings that challenged social mores around sexuality ( this was in the 80s) and later to commemorate the deaths of my gay friends to the AIDS crisis. I was much more interested in being a political activist than being financially successful and always worked at crappy retail jobs to get by .

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I make highly detailed oil paintings on linen with many color layers .The paintings feel almost embroidered in their attention to line and layer. The subject matter has included lesbian daddies, nudes, baby dykes, exquisite flowers, overly ripe weeds and hundreds of ham sandwiches, bottles of gatorade and frozen pizzas, I hope to make paintings that reflect this moment of a dying planet, obesity, sexual malleability, over abundance and loud politics. Nothing about making art is easy – it’s isolating, demanding physically and mentally. Making paintings is hard because it doesnt rely on anything other than basic tools of brush and paint. Its purely poetic and intellectual as a result. No tricks to hide behind here !
How do you over come challenges? In my case , its been waiting sometimes decades for the world to catch up to my ideas . I think many women artists have experienced this late blossoming ! Study deeply, work harder than anyone else, find the most brilliant people to talk to and share ideas with ( Tom Knecthel, Kurt Kauper, Keith Recker, Bret Reichman, Julia Kunin , Cindy Tower…) Love old dead artists, travel the world when you can to see the great works of art , keep coming back to stuff you didnt understand before , D ont be as stubborn as me . Find art dealers that have a long trajectory and are steadfast in their support of uncomfortable , politically important art. Stick with your beliefs

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I live in a rural community surrounded by working dairy farms and dotted with soul crushing poverty in hollowed out towns in central New York . The area where I live was the birth place of abolitionism , occult religions, the underground railroad and women’s suffrage. We could visit the Thomas Cole Paintings in nearby Utica, travel to Harriet Tubman’s home or visit the Oneida Community where the Utopian society practiced open sexuality with multiple partners, an obscure form of birth control sanctioned by the founder and all while building bear and rat traps. We could take rooms there too !

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
Keith Recker , the color guru , writer , sensitive art critic and collector has been a dear friend since our college days.He has given me money , bought art, sat with me when my parents died , looked at art in museums and galleries and frozen his ass off waiting in line for cheap standing room tickets to the opera when we couldnt afford seats. We have nourished each other intellectually and re wired our brains to consume culture and make new things in the world for other thoughtful people.

Website: katharinekuharic.com P.P.O.W Gallery – ppowgallery.com

Instagram: kuharickatharine

Facebook: Katharine Kuharic

Image Credits
photos courtesy of the artist and PPOW Gallery