Artist Kate McCammon visited our school to give a talk about her experiences abroad and how they impacted her work. Kate has had various experiences travelling abroad to pursue her art career, first studying in Norway and then moving on to locales like Venice, Florence, and Sorento. Her art style has evolved significantly since she began travelling abroad, going from a hyper-textured large portrait style to a smaller, more abstract style.
McCammon started her art career doing large portraits of people she knew; she found that others in her classes criticized the thick textures of her work as taking away from the overall effect. After travelling abroad for the first time in Norway, she began doing work with less powerful paint texture, as well as working with smaller canvases. After her next visit abroad to Sorento, she began doing work with landscapes, finding that they drew her in more than she thought they would, having previously been attached to portraits. She would do more landscape work in Florence.
After several trips abroad, McCammon found it difficult to paint at home without the inspiration of the landscapes she had had abroad. She began doing work with old photo negatives as a basis, and eventually began working on a series of light blue on black silhouette paintings, a project which is still ongoing and is now inspired by original photos as well as negatives. Her art has come a long way since her original realistic portraits, evolving into a style all her own which she has only been able to achieve through her studies abroad and the influences she received there.
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