Kate McGraw

Kate McGraw was born into a family that valued creativity, her mother was an artist, and her father a musician.  She began drawing and playing the piano before she started elementary school, and spent many hours in forests in her childhood hiking with a sketch pad and colored pencils, while living in a house filled with classical music. She studied piano at the Cleveland Institute of Music as a young child, and after her lessons would often go to the Cleveland Art Museum to sit and draw. She spent one year in the Netherlands as an exchange student, after graduating high school in the United States. While there she studied piano with an American pianist at the Arnhem Conservatory, and art at her host high school.  She spent many hours at museums throughout the Netherlands, England, and France.  She returned to the US and graduated from the Hartt School of Music, as a pianist and opera coach.  She later completed a PhD in clinical psychology, and served in the United States Air Force and Department of Defense as a missile officer and as a psychologist.  While mostly self-taught, she has spent the last several years working to advance her technique, strengthen her voice, and expand her body of work.  She has taken a few workshops at the Florence Academy of Art, and prefers to work en plein air and from life. The majority of her work is focused on landscapes and portraits, looking for the soul.

* This statement has been provided directly by the artist in association to their 15^th International ARC Salon entries. This content has not been edited for typos or grammatical errors and has not been vetted for accuracy.