Katherine Porter, an influential painter known for her intuitive and vividly colored branch of Expressionism, passed away at her home in Santa Fe, N.M. on April 22, 2024. She was 82. The cause was a heart attack, according to LewAllen Galleries, which represents her work.
Ms. Porter's art embodied early modernist abstraction with elements such as spirals, curves, and shapes that occasionally evoked familiar forms like buildings and weather. Her large-scale pieces were noted for their unfiltered quality and personal use of color, standing out in a realm between figurative and Abstract Expressionism. One of her notable works, "Fire, Water, Sun and Moon" from 1979, is displayed at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. Another piece, "New York Number," is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Born Katherine Louanne Pavlis on September 11, 1941, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, she pursued her art studies at Colorado College and Boston University. She worked various jobs, including teaching, while nurturing her artistic career and eventually received notable recognition and awards, including honorary doctorates from Colby College and Bowdoin College.
Throughout her life, Porter lived in multiple locations, including Belfast, Maine, where she created a significant studio space. Her work was featured in the Whitney Biennial in 1973 and 1981 and has been collected by major institutions such as the Whitney Museum, the Guggenheim, and MoMA.
Porter was married twice, to sculptor Stephen Porter and later to Mark Dietrich. She is survived by her brother, Ned Greedy, and sister, Karen Pavlis Sielaff. Despite stepping back from the commercial art world in the late 1990s, Porter remained dedicated to her craft, continuing to paint until her death.