We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Kathleen Deep. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Kathleen below.

Kathleen, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?

There was always a drawing pencil in my hand as a kid. If I wasnt studying or playing my saxophone, I was teaching myself how to draw and was experimenting with every material I could get my hands on. In undergrad I pursued a major in photography, a material I had never tried before. I fell in love with the history of the medium and the experimental/chemical nature of it. Copious amounts of time creating in the darkroom turned into a job offer to run the darkroom. Having the darkroom to my disposal, collaborating more closely with my peers, and learning the ins and outs on a business perspective of running a facility really stayed with me. From there I knew the arts wasnt just a hobby, but the professional path I wanted to take. I went on to earn two undergrad degrees in photography, art and photo history, and then a Masters degree in art. Ive run darkrooms at three colleges, was a college analog photo/ alternative process teacher for four years, have digitized rare books and archives, and maintained a 3.5 million volume monograph collection in my career before moving to NC. I am now a gallery manager and curator for a very successful gallery in Raleigh, creating exhibitions and curating private collections.

Kathleen, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am a girl of many hats, an Artist, a writer, and by profession a gallery manager/curator. Experimenting with material and a constant interest in the unknown has been a driving force. Since my education in analog photography, I have shifted mainly to mixed media work, returning back to my interest in hand manipulated material. Unconventional materials that you’d find at the hardware store, raw natural dried material like dirt and dried leaves, scrap bits of old photos and drawings, makeup, hand ground color powders, experimenting with hydrophobic materials, all make an appearance, to name a few. I enjoy learning how materials react and respond to each other, and if I can recreate the effect. I just love process! My work is a very different type of landscape or water scene than what you typically see in a gallery, and I am proud of that. I currently have representation at the gallery I work at, by invitation from the owner. A very humbling experience for me.

Translating this into my profession, while at the gallery I am able to break down a piece of artwork and educate my clients on what they are looking at. Understanding material, creation, and with my education, all come into play when looking for new artists to represent at the gallery, creating exhibitions, curating those exhibitions, curating the galleries inventory, and working with clients in their home to develop their collections.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

Whether I am photographing or working on a mixed media piece, the process and the doing is more important than getting to the end result. I enjoy analog cameras and processes because the methods are slower than digital. The experimental nature of my mixed media work can often slow down the development of the piece, sometimes working on multiple pieces at one time over the course of months. I never know what the end result is going to be, or have an intentional end point. A constant driving force is that I am always learning something about the materials I work with, how they react and respond to each other, and how I can manipulate them. The aesthetic of the artwork changes as I develop my toolbox of methods, so its exciting for me to see how my work has evolved over the years too, motivating me to keep going and see what I come up with next.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

This is a loaded question that I think a lot of creatives can relate to, and its this. Art does not have to be about anything. From my adolescence all the way through creating artwork to earn two undergraduate degrees, my work was about how I digest what I see and the places and things Id experience. The images were “pretty pictures”, well executed, sometimes about myself, and the like, but often involved manipulation and pushing boundaries of the material, so the work stood out in that regard.
Shifting into my twenties, exhibiting in juried shows all over the country, and wanting to be a more serious artist, I entered graduate school. The thinking shifted to looking at artwork in a conceptual way. Manipulating material didnt have enough weight to carry the piece. Every method that I used to create with had to have a meaning, the final images had to follow a predefined concept. The feeling of creating because “I needed it” was masked. Do I enjoy conceptual art? Sure. I enjoy all art, not to be misunderstood there. But as a creator that is driven from somewhere internally, shifting to conceptual art shook me. Working towards a Masters was being in reactive mode all the time. It wasnt until post graduation where I could really digest what I did the last few years and grasp what was important to me and my work, and that creating for me, and creating art that didnt have to reference anything in particular, was okay. It was a challenge, but it taught me a lot about myself as a creator, and my work.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.kathleendeep.wixsite.com/fineart
• Instagram: @kathleendeep
• Facebook: Kathleen Deep
• Linkedin: KathleenDeep
• Twitter: @DeepKathleen

Image Credits
All artworks are my own. Please email me if you’d like a title inventory list- thanks!