My work engages with the American mythology of the open road, a place often portrayed as outlaw territory and a site of wandering and self-discovery.
Through oil painting, I explore the road as an emotional, psychic, and existential space. My work is based on my experiences driving long distances and the baggage that comes with being a woman traveling alone. It 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.
Motifs such as windshields, stars, text, billboards, souvenir necklaces, and the Arizona Meteor Crater become sites for painterly experimentation, combining landscape, abstraction, and representational imagery. Through these motifs I explore gesture, color, materiality, and shifts in scale in order to draw out the deeper emotional and existential resonances of my subject matter. The act of painting is similar to being on the road, with smears of paint becoming dirt splattered across a windshield, or stardust from an ancient crater that is now a roadside tourist attraction.
Ultimately, I aim to connect the very big and the very small, painting a sublime road trip through the human heart and psyche. 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. She lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.
Email: katiemarshallstudio@gmail.com
Instagram: katiemarshallstudio