Kathleen Waterloo
Portfolio
26
Winter
Kathleen Waterloo, Artist
Expressing myself feeds my soul. I never studied
or made art until after my children were born. One
night in my kitchen, the “ghost” of Georgia O’Keefe
entered my body and said this is what you’re going
to do. Although I was in Interior Architecture, I felt
this urge to do something more creative; it’s a
trend in my life. At college I studied accounting and
found it was all about rules; it just left me dry, so I
went back to school for Interior Design. After having
kids, my work schedule didn’t coincide with raising
a family; I’d always wanted to try watercolors so at
age 40 I went to the School of the Art Institute.
At school, instructors talked about encaustic,
but didn’t know much about it. They can’t teach
it because the rooms aren’t set up for exhaust,
How Do You Know, [detail], 2012, Encaustic on panel, 30” x 30”.
liability or fire hazard. In 1999, I took a workshop
with Christy Dietz at Oxbow in Saugatuck, and ever
since I have done nothing but encaustic. I love the
fluidity, the liquid aspect. I started my art life with
watercolor and encaustic seemed to mirror what I
loved about that medium. Moving the paint with the
blowtorch, the translucency, the layers…I bonded
right away. My children were small, I was working
in oils and the clean up was frustrating, so with
encaustic I could merely pull the plug, walk away
and the next day, just plug it in.
www.EAINM.com