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News from the high paint production daze of New York! Organizing creative teams, painting

in new mediums, setting up music nights, making films, biking into the abyss, designing for

skateboards, posters and t-shirts, putting together artist books, writing both critical essays

and fiction, reviving architectural designs newly informed by painting processes, hanging with

all the artists that are here because they are at the top of their disciplines -- balancing on this

Coney Island coaster learning curve, although, I did find myself flat out doored by a car with

broken ribs on Houston one beautiful night in June (everyone here's been hit by a car, join the

club) Having Sofia visit here was really the most fun. A recent 60x40in painting on my

board "ImagineDaysLikeThese" is about the revelatory songs Imagine and Nobody Told Me,

The videos of OneGRRLGal and SPLASH! will be both be edited and ready soon to show --

2006 - 07: What a year -- outside my 8th storey window in Hell's Kitchen facing north from west

37th I could see the scrapers and hear the music of this city constantly lit-up electric, thick with

a twisting sound jungle -- paint the BOOGIE WOOGIE RIGHT NOW. I'll have this work in group

exhibits, but the main focus for me in the first few months of 2008 is getting ready three solo shows (photo by Rodney Zagury)

of different focus. Usually paintings are seen first at the reception, but due to the social nature of Leaving the first presentation of the Fellows at A.I.R. Gallery, March 2007, Chelsea

my work I'm going to post them online, so that the each subject can see the community of the

I won "Best In Show" for the Annual 2007 Online National Arts Club painting competition, for the 60x40in watercolor New York Is A Brick House! (guest judge Dr. Richard Firestone, thank you!) Yes:

This watercolor painting of the Statue Of Liberty and lower Manhattan has been chosen by Mayor Bloomberg
to represent Immigrant Heritage Week at Gracie Mansion -- the first view many immigrants see of New York.

I very often give my subjects jpg presents: I am inviting New Yorkers to have this free download screensaver.

NEW YORK - FaithPainting: portraits of Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, and Christian communities
Reception: Thursday, April 17, 2008, 6-8pm, A.I.R. Gallery Chelsea, continuous showing after May 1, 2008

Office Worker at Synagogue, watercolor, 10.25x7in, Brookyn, (c)2007 Katherine Dolgy Ludwig Now That I've Found 1000 Beautiful Things I Still Believe That You Exist, watercolor, 40x60in, Brooklyn (c)2008 Katherine Dolgy Ludwig

NEW YORK - EveryoneWhoHelpedMeGetMy01Visa: portraits in London, New York, and Toronto
Reception: Thursday, April 17, 2008, 6-8pm, A.I.R. Gallery Chelsea, continuous showing after May 1, 2008

Mike Pope, watercolor, 10.25x7in, London, (c)2007 Katherine Dolgy Ludwig Randy Szuch, watercolor, 10.25x7in, London, (c)2007 Katherine Dolgy Ludwig Wendy Szuch, watercolor, 10.25x7in, London, (c)2007 Katherine Dolgy Ludwig

NEW YORK - JustAmericanWords: five foot Word Paintings 2007-08, and portraits in communities that inspired them, and doc videos
Reception: Thursday, May 1, 2008, 6-8pm, A.I.R. Gallery Chelsea, continuous showing after May 1, 2008

NEW YORK - AIRPlay08, : Biennial of innovative music by women performing with painting live Reception: Thursday, May 8, 2008, 6-8pm, A.I.R. Gallery, Chelsea

NEW YORK - The Feminist Art Project of My Own:
Venue tba I am continuously making paintings here to think it through for myself, to reflect back to me what I mean being a GRRL:

Cityscape Views: The Feminist Art Project, watercolor on acidfree paper, 22x30in, NYC, (c)2007 Katherine Dolgy Ludwig BrklnAnglz, and, Kally & Kavita in Williamsburg, both watercolor on acidfree paper, 10.25x7in, Brooklyn (c)2007 Katherine Dolgy Ludwig

NEW YORK - CENSORSHIP:
Reception: November 8 - December 6, 2007, 8pm, freeDimensional at Brecht Forum, 451 West Street, between Bank and Bethune, NYC 10014 -- Press Photos
Painting “Brooklyn Funk Universe” (40x60inch, Watercolor, 2007) in Group Show with dancers, speakers, and my Painting Performance with a Marching Band!

LONDON: JAZZ FESTIVAL -- PERFORMANCE PAINTING:
Friday, November 16, 2007, Purcell Room, Southbank Centre Performance Paintings of Canadian dance artist Heather Cornell (Manhattan Tap), and jazz pianist and composer Andy Milne, with Bandwidth. Pushing the boundaries of art forms, blurring lines between live painting, live music performance, composition and dance. Click here for more live paintings!

NEW YORK - TOGETHER AGAIN:
Reception: Friday, October 26, 2007, TRIBES Gallery, Alphabet City, NYC
Katherine Dolgy Ludwig TogetherAgain! Performance/Painting with SEARCH

SEARCH at TRIBES, RJ Avallone (Trumpet), Matt Maley (Saxophone & Clarinet), Bryson Kern (Drums), & David Moss (Bass), watercolors, 10/8/07, art.les.nyc studios (Lower East side) (c)2007 Katherine Dolgy Ludwig

NEW YORK - GOLD, HORSES, SKY, FIRE: A HARLEM ART EVENING:
Reception: Saturday, October 13, 2007, at 264 West 136th Street
Katherine Dolgy Ludwig PaintingMyWay with The NY Soundpainting Orchestra, and Troostite, in Group Show

NEW YORK - RARE & RADIANT:
Reception: Tuesday, October 2-14, 2007, at The National Arts Club, 15 Gramercy Park, 10003
Painting, “Fireworks Flowers” (22x30inch, Watercolor, 2006) in Group Show

TORONTO - SPLASH!:
Reception: Sunday, September 23, 2007, at Gibraltar Point Centre for the Arts, Toronto Island
Painting Performance and Co-Curating LTT Biennial

Sometimes I'm in Toronto, and in this past September was the Biennial I co-curate at Toronto Island, bringing together Artscape

mult-disciplinary arts tenants of Gibraltar Point Centre for the Arts, showcasing their work and their projects made with other artists, which

are island inspired. SPLASH! was my own painting/performance piece in collaboration with Rough Idea Jazz Presenter and Huge Radio Host

of CKLN's AM/FM Ron Gaskin. Timed to coincide with Rogue Wave, the long running installation event on these islands, Ron invited Island

and mainland musicians to play together while I painted them, in what Ron calls an "offshore" mindset. Sofia A-1 assistant got 70 video releases

from guests, and on the Gas Station Recording Studio's Dale Morningstar''s equipment, this was the h-awesome music lineup:

the three R's are ROUGHIDEA... Robin Easton: sound and mixes; Rebecca Campbell: dj take-a-memo supreme team; Ron Gaskin: mc + taxi/DJ robin easton played: white fish bay singers; jacob jones; david bowie; kode9/spaceape; eye contact; nori tanaka and jason adjemian; stars like fleas; hubbub; tall firs; marcel aucoin trio; peter brotzman tentet; dave burrell; fiery furnaces/LIVE: Grahame Beakhust piano; Jerry Englar blue pocket trumpet; Brad Harley clarinet /DJ robin easton played: freedom jones; thurston moore; roots manuva; slow loris/LIVE: David Sait guzheng/DJ robin easton played: metric pre-show selections; sea of song trio/LIVE: Wende Bartley laptop as composer/DJ wende bartley/LIVE: Anne Bourne cello; Jacquey Malcolm cello; Christine Duncan voice; DB Boyko voice/LIVE: Chantale piano/DJ robin easton played: kode9/spaceape; lime quantum/LIVE: Alastair Dickson guitar; Anne Bourne cello; Aaron Lumley double bass /LIVE: Aaron Lumley double bass; DJ robin easton played; sonic youth; besnard lakes; and more la route du rock selections/filmmaker Eric Weinthal shot the performance/painting doc video footage and photographer Gordon Hertzman did the performance/painting doc stills for my April A.I.R. Chelsea show, and special gratitude as always to Artscape and Ray Stedman for catering plus multi-favors, and St. Andrew by the Lake for the Ward's Island transportation assistance -- SPLASH!ANDAHALF! The invite:

ImagineDaysLikeThese, Invitation, watercolor on acidfree board, 40x60in, Bushwick Brooklyn, (c)2007 Katherine Dolgy Ludwig Collaborators in SPLASH! Katherine painting Ron Gaskin on-air CKLN 88.1 jazz AM/FM radio

NEW YORK - OneGRRLGal:
Reception: Friday, August 10, 2007, art.les.nyc studios, 202 Rivington Street

This was a Painting Performance event this past August 2007, based on music, making music, and what being an artist means to me-- what else is that

Wainright song about?! -- in the midst of a good crowd filmed by Rodney Zagury at Aaron Thompson's art.les.nyc studios, on the Lower East Side, the

footage to be shown in Tokyo in March 2008 and at my April 2008 solo show at A.I.R. Gallery on West 25th at 10th, NYC. Singing with Lily Maase on

electric guitar around the HOWL tree, after painting three 10x12 foot canvases in acrylic, and a series of 10x7in watercolors of the guest band SEARCH

with RJ Avallone, Matt Maley, David Moss, and Bryson Kern, whose first album "Today is Tomorrow" will be released before this Fall 2007. The painting

is social painting: "People Will Know When They See This Show The Kind of A Girl I Am" -- Special thanks to Da Vinci's Marcello Dworzak:

This last year I've had wonderful days with Mr. Ornette Coleman, who this year received the Lifetime Achievement Grammy, and the Pulitzer Prize -- it's about time! -- and with his cousin, and

his son, Denardo Coleman (drums), and friends, Soon Kim (sax), Tevin Thomas (keyboards), Chris Walker (bass), and Bruce Eisenbeil (guitar) , we were paint jamming while they all played

in a circle around me, toes to the little boards on the floor -- true surround sound! I first heard Mr. Coleman's music when I was about 12, playing albums from the library, and I never heard

any sound after that in the same way. To understand music as a relationship between all sound, and translate this also into a way of conceiving visual art is a shift for the visual paradigm

encompassing all the disciplines -- lateral thought weaving -- I think the 11 hours I first spent listening and talking with this complete artist-musician was one of the best art theory discussions

I've ever had. What a conceptual ride -- and what music! The terrific bass guitarist, Chris Walker, looked over at the fast likeness and said, "Kathy, how do you do that?" I couldn't believe it, I

said, "Chris, how do you do that?!!!" Here are the paintings from that first day, and more paintings made together with Ornette, and his friends, Charlie Haden (double bass) and Ruth Cameron,

Charnette Moffett (double bass), and RJ Avallone (trumpet), other evenings in March, July, November, and December 07, and with Mari Okubo while Ornette wrote her some music Just Like That:

NEW YORK - freedom2BRselves:
Reception: June 7, 2007, The National Arts Club, Gramercy Park

While waiting to sort out my entry status into America because of the Fellowship, I made 25 portraits of a grade 5/6 class, including the teacher and degu, at Forest Hill Public School,

again interested in making paintings of strangers in perceived groups that are distinct individuals, in this case Pre-Teens. It was a good idea to choose children to paint all day long in the two

cities as I squeaked through the border after many turnaways, and it kept me positive in such uncertain days. These were exhibited altogether in June 2007 at the New York National Arts Club,

along with the portraits of the grade 5/6 gifted class I made in NYC at PS145M. In November 2007, a class of preteens will be added in London. The show is ongoing, to be exhibited in different cities

where a class of 11 and 12 year olds will be added each time. The children and I talk individually together about how I make the work while they watch the process, and the families are each given

a print of the painting. The children are invited to write each other and send their own artwork, and later at the shows they can meet. Here's some of the local press., and the invite:

Invitation to freedom2BRselves, , including the 41 portraits, National Arts Club, June 2007, Katherine Dolgy Ludwig

While waiting what seemed like forever to find out my 01Visa status, I was prevented from bringing any of my work over from Canada to show the A.I.R. gallery, so I got busy making new work

--- I felt like nothing was going to stop me.. So many things were happening to me, it was freezing in Brooklyn, I was between places, and then in the new place there was no internet -- so I

plugged into my walkman on a loop, playing over and over the music that made me feel the shudder of it all. Since I hadn't been allowed to come over with my truckload of usual working

materials, to achieve the large scale I wanted to render the size of my experience, I made triptychs, coming up with paintings that made me so happy and made me cry. Although the color

sensibilities are the same, something new was happening to me in my way of perceiving spatial relationships over the 2-D plane. These three in sets of 3's, the first from Jeff Buckley's cover

of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, the second from Rufus Wainwright's Tower of Learning, and the third from Beck's Mixin' Business, are the images of the magical music I heard first in Brooklyn:

In September and October of 2006 I was working in New York on two shows for my specific proposal on Michele Gambetta's RIDER Project (click here to see some of the 111 paintings!), bringing art in a traveling truck

throughout the communities of NYC to foster positive social change. As much a guerilla process as a collaboration of working artists, the RIDER Project has been an effective cultural and educational forum since 2003 with 7

exhibitions in 3 New York City boroughs, 26 neighborhoods, engaging 150 artists from 6 states and 4 countries, and tens of thousands of visitors. I admire Michele's ingenuity and social commitment to contemporary art on

wheels. I was doing on-street Painting Performance with the public, giving out digital gifts. I was making many friends, the artists on the show working together, the strangers I met who gave me their stories, their words, their music:

(photo by Rodney Zagury) Katherine painting with Mud Flap Girl Kate Barry, 14/9/06, Chelsea

I also spent time during the RIDER in 2006 at Dizzy's jazz club in Lincoln Centre making paintings for a present of digitals for Freddie Cole's birthday -- thank you Todd Barkan for making it possible! I stayed to paint every

musician on the stage those nights. In public places, it is important to me as a painter to fit in, like musicians jamming, so to work as small, cleanly, and inconspicuously as possible -- here the darkness and glitter

of the club makes the work beautiful for me to feel part of and get onto the paper.

I posted all the 111 little paintings I made in NYC on the RIDER Project and looked for connections. It was a wall of sound! While it's true that I worked with many musicians this time, it was more than that.

The color of the music I heard every day on my travels in the streets led to the big loud paintings shown here, and the words of funk (jazz with stank on it!) took over my work at the island studio something fierce --

I went back to NYC to live in Brooklyn, and applied for Fellowships. I was called in to do both SOHO20 and A.I.R., both in the same Chelsea Gallery building by chance, and now I am one of the six A.I.R. Gallery

in Manhattan's 2007-08 18-month Fellowship Recipients, at the first artist-run, not-for-profit contemporary art gallery for women artists in the country, along with artists Lauren Simkin Berke, Barbara Hatfield,

Kharis Kennedy, Anita Ragusa and Hanna Sandin. Thank you to the Jurors and everyone who is helping to make this happen -- I'll be flying back and forth now between three cities, without much dough, but it's going

to be incredible to work with this community of artists, and the panelists who will visit our studios in preparation for our Solo shows. Fellowship Recipients will also participate in Group shows, and plan and implement

a public program or special project for the gallery -- my event is called AIRPlay, a big Open Call for innovative female musicians performing live in the gallery and on the street (with Jamal Joseph, head of film at Columbia

doing the camera work, Tevin Thomas as our soundman, and Rodney Zagury doing photography and archiving of the material for the gallery). Here are some of the paintings shown for the A.I.R. Fellowship, based on

music I heard while painting in Brooklyn, including Brooklyn Funk Universe from I Got Cash by Everton Sylvester of the The Brooklyn Funk Essentials, I Do What I Want in America from It's Your Thing by the Isley

Brothers, NYC is a Brick House! from Brick House by The Commodores (all displayed earlier on this Home Page of the website), and shown here Marry Popins Does Manhattan from a poem Marry Popins by my daughter,

We'll Go To Coney and Eat Baloney from Sea-Fever by John Masefield, Jungle Boogie Creation Story from Jungle Boogie by Kool and the Gang,, and Crazy Love for This Town from Crazy Love by Van Morrison performed

We'll Go To Coney and Eat Baloney, watercolor on acidfree board, 60x40in, (c)2006 Katherine Dolgy Ludwig Jungle Boogie Creation Story, watercolor on acidfree board, 60x40in,(c)2006 Katherine Dolgy Ludwig

I believe that all the work is an evolution from an earlier inclination. I am glad to make work that is enjoyed, and when people generously buy my paintings they make it possible for me to continue.

The flights, the rents, the materials, the kids, it all adds up no matter how little I eat, but it's been beautiful so far, and we are seeing it all to its endgame. I also know though that the reason I've

lasted for the long haul is because I've, as Roger Greenwald the poet encouraged me, become myself more and more. So, there is the final painted piece, it is from a strong skill set -- I've worked

hard through four degrees and so many shows and enjoyed the awards and rewards -- but this is not the well of vitality that brings my work forward. The light source in my work is from within, that is

it is the subject who makes the colors shine so bright, and I know that. As in medieval painting, I REALLY BELIEVE, and I size the subjects and produce the coloration not based on what I see

perspectivally, but through strong feeling, adoration, of the subject. When I paint, I am giving to the subject, looking at them intensely, with unconditional love and acceptance, and in no other way

can this kind of work be achieved. It's two-way, and I thank them with a digital gift and make an event called 'the show' in which we can all meet. I believe that this is what I have to give, so this is

the Social or Populist way in which I am choosing to work. I see this thread operating in all my subject choices over the years of painting behind me, and it as a pattern that I value for which give thanks.

Postal Address Katherine Dolgy Ludwig, c/o Kelly Wilson Harvey, Artscape, 171 East Liberty, Suite 224, Toronto ON M6K 3P6, Canada

Copyright © 2000-2008 Katherine Dolgy Ludwig All Rights Reserved

Last modified: 03/04/08