Kathryn Winkler's Story Insights about the Artist

I started drawing horses at home (and in school) when I was about 5 years old, and I have drawn or painted horses and other animals throughout my life. I was side-tracked when I went back to work in the Washington DC area, although my first job was close to art - as a patent illustrator. After earning a B.A. degree in Business and an M.A. in International Studies, I enjoyed a career in engineering management. In the late 1990s, I was motivated to paint an armoire for one of my daughters. The motif I chose was pictographic and was composed of horses and bison. After a 21 year diversion in Corporate America supporting the U.S Navy shipboard combat systems, I decided to go back to my first loves – animals and art. When I came back to art, I decided that I also wanted to do something different from my earlier work which was very realistic. The pictographic idea had stayed with me, and when I began my professional art career in earnest, each of my paintings was a new expression of that art form. I began to experiment with a neo-pictographic form – modernistic interpretations of animals on cave walls. That period lasted for about 6 years. For the past 4 years, my style has become what we call realistic impressionism. 

What inspires me to paint the way I paint is the satisfaction I feel when I can portray an animal in a way that captures its spirit. I love more than anything to capture the spirit-sense of the animal on my canvas. If I am patient, each animal entrusts me with its soul, and allows me to bring it out on my canvas to share with the viewer. I love to leave the viewer with a spiritual connection with the animal. I find immeasurable pleasure in not spelling everything out, and to let the viewer experience the essence of a spiritual connection with a particular painting. As an artist, the most wonderful feeling occurs with having made the emotional investment in a painting and noticing the sound the painting leaves in the air. If other people can feel it, then I have achieved my objective and am gratified. Based on feedback I have received from collectors who have purchased my work, they often are struck with a powerful emotional experience, wanting to be with the subject in a way that they have not experienced before with other art.