Katherine Keltner is a Brooklyn-based contemporary artist. Her recent body of paintings stem from a sight along her daily walk to the studio: an abandoned lot overgrown with weeds. Enchanted by the weeds’ persistence in the face of disregard and the grace and elegance in the simple shape of their leaves, Keltner uses the leaf form as a repeated icon in her work. She slowly builds layers of paint, primarily blues with bursts of magenta and yellow, and the leaf-like shapes and blocks of color float above and below grids, emerging and dissipating in a push and pull.

Raised in New York, she holds an AB, Dartmouth College, and an MFA, American University, and studied at Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. Her work has been shown throughout the US, in Canada and Europe including recent projects – a solo show, Quarantine Meditations, at Sweet Lorraine Gallery in Brooklyn, and a two-person show, Katherine Keltner + Luc Dubois – Unbound: Points of Encounter, at the Katzen Arts Center American University Museum; reviews and features in publications such as Art F City, ARTINFO and the L Magazine; and artist’s talks at American University and Hunter College. Keltner is a co-editor and writer at POVarts where she has published articles on Elizabeth Murray and Barbara Rose and she is at work on an oral history project of Rose which will become part of the Getty Research Institute’s permanent collection. Keltner was a Ragdale Fellow, the Artist-in-Residence at Rhombus Space, and a fellowship recipient at Vermont Studio Center.