Katherine Porter

Born in 1941 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, the energetic painter Katherine Porter has lived in Boston, New York, New Mexico, California, Maine and Canada and traveled extensively throughout Latin America and Europe. She was educated at Colorado College, and both Colby College and Bowdoin College have awarded her honorary degrees. The Guggenheim, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art and the Carnegie Institute, among others, house Porter's works. Although she began exhibiting in the late '60s, when Minimalism reigned and the art world prized structure and detachment, Porter rebelled by incorporating gesture and movement in her canvases. In the early 1980s, she challenged even the rules of abstraction, introducing symbols and signs of representation - a cross, a sun, a cityscape - into her works. In addition, many of her paintings took on an element of political protest, against pollution, corporate culture and U.S. involvement in El Salvador. The art world took notice. Porter cites influences ranging from Rembrandt to Philip Guston. Her canvases are charged with energy: Thick and richly textured, the paint appears to burst from the surface. However, the rectangle, the circle and the clearly defined frame emerge from the tumult and impose a sense of order and geometry. This play of forms, the pairing of chaos and order, speaks of Porter's conviction that unity and harmony are possible despite the discord that persists at the center of existence.

Source: Kate Austin, Gadfly Productions

http://www.gadfly.org/1999-04/buzz-porter.htm