Supple Leopard

Finding solidarity in deviants, drifters, and the overly sensitive, Katie Halton shares her stories of struggle through ultra-textured portraits. Her paintings on velvet combine simplified imagery and suggestive titling to create iconographical dialogue between her existentially weary characters and their audience, ultimately seeking reverence for the irreverent.

Her recent work pays homage to the European and Asian tradition of painting on velvet. Fascinated by the irony of it all—velvet’s historical role in both high and low cultural operations—Halton applies the technique to her straightforward and seductive imagery, amplifying the dimensional components and creating a smoothness to the minimally rendered characters in this sensual nod to 1970’s kitsch.

Katie Halton received her MFA in Painting and Drawing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2016. This is her first show at Western Exhibitions. Halton has received fellowships to the Ox-Bow and Vermont Studio Center residencies, completed a large mural commission from the City of Ann Arbor, a 14-piece church commission of Stations of the Cross, and exhibited at the Michigan State Capital Building. Halton was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan and currently lives and works in Chicago.