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Curator's Picks - Katy Mixon

The surface is where I and the other meet, where porousness allows for give and take. Paintings are inquiries into the potency of a surface, the capacity of color and texture to both emote and conceal.


–Katy Mixon, 2020

Cloud Seeds I

2019, carved oil on panel, 22x20 inches

Cloud Seeds II

2019, carved oil on panel, 22x20 inches

Cloud Seeds I and II by Katy Mixon hang side by side in the gallery and seen together offer a wonderful introduction to the artist’s process. Hundreds of small marks suggesting stitches or kernels are created by carving back into previously applied paint layers to reveal pigment beneath. Moving across the picture plane these marks connect interior and exterior and traverse the porous surfaces activating them. Mixon’s abstract shorthand appears absolutely contemporary yet attuned to age-old practices of tilling the land or natural processes of cloud formation. Contrasting outcroppings of color along the bottom edges of the paintings recall a horizon line in these works that interactively define our engagement with and understanding of our environments.
Katy Mixon hails from Orangeburg, South Carolina. In 2015 she completed her M.F.A. from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She was a teaching fellow at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and holds a B.A. in Studio Art from Davidson College, Davidson, North Carolina.

Solo exhibitions include Glossolalia: The Map Is Not The Territory, Allcott Gallery, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Brush Abandoned at 10 Storehouse Row, in North Charleston, South Carolina; Lines and Layers, North Charleston City Gallery, North Charleston, South Carolina; Dwell at the Van Every/Smith Gallery, Davidson College, Davidson, North Carolina. She has been included in group shows in Venice, Italy, Boston, Massachusetts, North and South Carolina, including Front Burner at the North Carolina Museum of Art.

Interview with Katy Mixon

Katy Mixon
North Carolina Museum of Art

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