Last updated: April 1, 2023
Article
Kathy Hodge
Courtesy of Kathy Hodge. Used with permission.
Many times in these two weeks I ventured out, my easel awkward and heavy on my back, only to get caught up in looking and exploring, not stopping to paint, discovering the granite bridges and stairs, a strange human order in the wilderness, among unexpected waterfalls and thick, impassible undergrowth. I climbed to ten of Acadia’s summits, following cairns silhouetted stark against the sky.
Other days, with leg muscles sore and knees stiff from hiking or biking, I set up my easel closer and let places anchor me awhile — Sieur de Monts, Little Hunter’s Beach, Connor’s Nubble and the woods behind the headquarters, where I found this image of ghostly hemlock tree skeletons, glowing white against the deep green Acadia forest.
– Kathy Hodge
Kathy Hodge was born in Providence, Rhode Island. At the age of 14 she took up her parents’ oil paints, put aside since they graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design and started their family of seven children. Like her parents, she attended RISD and majored in painting. After two years she found it necessary to leave school and work for a year to finance her education. She earned her BFA at Swain School of Design in New Bedford, MA.
After graduating she returned to Providence, she was inspired by the drama and light effects of the industrial waterfront and began the first of many series of paintings. These included the stark organic forms of the salt marshes which surround her home on the bay as well as man-made environments: church facades, Russian cityscapes, shoemaking machinery and paintings inspired by the view out a train window. She has exhibited this work in many one person shows. She has continued to pursue her interest in the natural landscape through the National Park and Forest Artist-in-Residence program.
She is currently working in marketing for the Providence Art Club, one of the oldest arts organizations in the country, and teaching painting, while completing a series from her residencies kayaking and camping with Wilderness Rangers in Alaska. She is also working on paintings using landscape and animal and insect life to explore the uneasy division of territory as our open spaces are developed and divided, which she hope will raise awareness of the need to respect the natural order of our world and environment. Visit her website.