My work engages with the American mythology of the open road, a space often portrayed as outlaw territory and a site of wandering and self-discovery. It exists as much in literature and film as in physical reality, shaped by works like On The Road, Easy Rider, and Ed Ruscha’s gas stations.
Through oil painting, I explore the road as an emotional, psychic, and existential space, filtered through my experiences driving long distances alone. My work reflects moments ranging from transcendent to mundane, funny to fearful: blasting Springsteen in the high desert, butterflies crushed on my windshield, car snacks spilled on the floor, a stranger’s unwanted gaze at a roadside motel.
Recurring motifs such as windshields, stars, billboards, bumper stickers, song lyrics, and the Arizona Meteor Crater become sites for painterly experimentation. Through these phenomena I explore gesture, color, materiality, and abstraction in order to draw out their deeper poetic and existential resonances.
Ultimately, I aim to connect the very big and the very small. A meteor slamming into Earth is not so different from the mark of violence on a body, or the scar left by heartbreak. For me, painting is an attempt to unify the human and the cosmic in a single moment.
Katie Marshall has a degree in Russian Literature from Reed College and an MFA from Cal State Long Beach (CSULB). Prior to getting her MFA she worked as a Russian translator; she is now a painter and a Lecturer in the CSULB School of Art.
Email: katiemarshallstudio@gmail.com
Instagram: katiemarshallstudio