Navigating Uncertainty: Narrative Drawings by Kathryn Polk
Saturday, November 1st 2025 - Sunday, Janurary 4th 2026
Upcoming Programming:
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Virtual Artist Talk: Thursday, Dec 11th 6-7:30PM | FREE
At the age of fifty, Kathryn Polk quit her lucrative business career to make art full-time. Although she took a self-described thirty-year sabbatical from making art, Kathryn has always been an artist. Her earliest memories of making art can be traced back to when she was just three years-old, keeping herself occupied while at church. The women in Kathryn’s family—her mother, grandmothers, sister, daughter, and granddaughters—serve as artistic inspiration. A self-described visual story-teller, Kathryn draws freely from memory about personal lived experiences of her past and present. Her prints are an honest expression of her perspective growing up as a woman in the 1950s and ‘60s and in response to contemporary issues that concern the female experience. Kathryn’s artwork visually communicates the importance of female empowerment and her ultimate hope is to inspire the positive advancement of women equality in our society.
Kathryn’s sketchbooks are integral to her practice and her drawings reflect her own private world. She sketches experiences from memory, allowing for experimentation and play to take place. The process of drawing freely gives Kathryn permission to visually communicate topics or lived experiences on her mind at any given time. Kathryn believes that a lot of good work can be found in chaos. For example, her drawings are often laid out randomly so she can witness the juxtapositions that take place, giving space for her to make sense of her inner world, and discover what themes visually come together as a result.
From there, she transfers her drawings to a smooth flat stone which she then etches using the method of lithography, a printing process where oil and water repel one another and the result of the inked image in stone is translated to paper. Kathryn learned and fell in love with lithography from her husband, Andy Polk, a lithographer himself. An immediate obsession took hold once Kathryn discovered that the medium gave her the closest feeling to drawing using a graphite pencil. Her classical training coupled with her love of free expression, has provided Kathryn the opportunity to explore contradictions in her work, treating the stone as an extension of her sketchbook drawings. To Kathryn, lithography is a gift of multiples, which provides her with ample opportunity to share her artwork and make it accessible to a wide audience.
This freedom of expression made way for a personal iconography and visual lexicon to take shape within her practice; a cathartic process that allows Kathryn to communicate feelings or ideas around personal or societal issues. A red thread appears throughout many prints symbolizing Kathryn’s bloodline—herself, mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother—all seamstresses. Symbols of fire reference cleansing, purifying, or even destruction. The depiction of logs symbolizes the heavy burdens we all carry, a powerful reminder from Kathryn to not let them stop us from where we need to go. Additionally, tattoos appear on the figures in her prints, serving as personal messages from Kathryn to combat societal intolerance. However, Kathryn’s use of symbols is not literal, in fact, she hopes the viewer brings their own experiences and emotions to her artwork.
Born in Memphis, Tennessee, Kathryn studied painting at Memphis Academy of Art and Memphis State University. She lived in Tucson, Arizona for several decades and now calls Indiana home. Her work is held in many national and international collections including The National Academy of Fine Art (China), University of Wales (UK), and The Denver Art Museum (CO). She is also the co-owner of L VIS Press, a lithography print studio.
