In the Midnight Hour Painting

“Preserving the moment, forming a memory but without the nostalgia, that wistful desire to return to a former time in one's life, that sentimental yearning for lost happiness. By painting these images, I can recreate or rediscover the happiness of a certain time and place and express my appreciation for the earth's beauty, which I find in the simplest things ‒ a flower, a face, a branch, a fish underwater ‒ and show the world what and how I see. I stop, linger, study what to other people is simply visual information to be quickly processed and then forgotten in their urgency to get somewhere else. Color, shape, light and pattern always catch my eye, then clamor to be translated into a language spoken in paint on paper, panel or canvas.” I was born and raised in Oregon (USA) and now live in Montreal (Canada). I began my artistic career studying life drawing and black and white photography at the Boston Museum School. When I moved to Montreal, I found myself without a darkroom, so I began experimenting with watercolors and later with oils. The world of color opened itself up and as a self-taught painter, I developed a technique that suited my realistic paintings. After a decade of showing these works in solo and group shows, I turned my eye to those around me, devoting the next six years almost exclusively to painting large-scale portraits of my friends, many of them dancers and artists. My passion for black and white resurfaced in these essentially monochromatic watercolors: warm and cold blacks and subtle tones of brown and grey are highlighted by well-placed touches of color. After the portrait period I returned to landscape painting and most recently, I have added a series of monoprints to my body of work, examples of which can be found around the world in North-American collections and others as far-flung as China, Switzerland and Singapore. I taught drawing and painting at to Saidye Bronfman School of Fine Arts for ten years, until the school closed in 2006, and have a Master's in Translation as well. I am a free-lance translator, working from French to English and now have four novels and five children's books in print! For more information, please visit my website: www.kathryngabinetkroo.com