About This Item:

Oil on Panel

48”L x 36”H

2022

“To create “Stargazer” I used a painting that I started in 2017 as the ground to build from. The original painting was a close up of a stargazer fish. I have recently been interested in creating a pictorial space that fluctuates between flatness and illusionary depth, using layered imagery and with varying painting application techniques. What emerges is a space that is fluid and contradictory at the same time. From a distance you can see a figure floating in the water, but up close the representation breaks down into strokes, and fragments of the original underpainting come through.

The image I used as reference for the figure is from a Victoria’s Secret swimsuit catalog. These advertisements read as “Birth of Venus” paintings from the past, goddesses emerging from the sea, saturated with desire, and revealing beauty ideals of the time. In this painting though, the figure is dissolving back into the waters instead of emerging out of the sea. She gazes out just like the stargazer, looking beyond as she breaks down into the surface.”

-Katy Richards

Katy Richards creates fleshy oil paintings that are concerned with the materiality of paint as well as the physicality of the human body. She is inspired by underwater and sea life, and paints from experiences as well as reference photography. Her work is in the Progressive Art Collection, and many other private and public collections. Richards teaches painting and drawing at Kent State University and received a BFA from The Cleveland Institute of Art and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art.