Kathy Halper creates contemplative, visual tapestries. Combining rich color and textures with thoughtful, carefully rendered narratives of forgotten members of society, Halper captures our attention through the strong emotional content of her work, evoking a universal sense of vulnerability and compassion. Using various textures and papers as the background of her paintings, she weaves her figurative subjects into this graphic environment through solid line and form, assimilating representational detail with obscurity and negative space. By employing this collage-inspired layering of materials and technique, Halper creates a strong psychological presence and voice for these individuals, as their outlines at once become metaphors for nostalgia and estrangement, kinship and intimacy, strength and uncertainty.
Halper has exhibited widely throughout the Chicago area. She has been a curator’s choice artist in the Around the Coyote Fall Festival, won first place in “In View”, the member’s show at The Art Center, has been selected as one of the artists of the Illinois Artisans Program and has had solo exhibits at Gallery Mornea, Saint Xavier University and the ARC Gallery. Her work has been chosen for exhibition by Woman Made Gallery, Johnsonese Gallery, Wag Arts, and Port Clinton Fine Arts Festival, where she received a Merit Award. This April, Halper participated in the debut of The Artist Project, an exhibition of independent artists to run concurrently with Art Chicago at The Merchandise Mart. She was one of only 50 artists chosen for this event.
Website: www.kathyhalper.com