Kat O’Connor: Swimming the Jewel

Artist Kat O’Connor brings her poetic and sublime paintings of water to Highfield Hall for the summer season. In Swimming the Jewel, O’Connor paints the subject that has been her muse for over a decade. O’Connor captures water and light and sometimes the movement of figures in water together and creates a seemingly new world of the senses.

O’Connor works in watercolor, acrylic, and oil, with subject matter reflecting what is important in her life, travel, horses, and swimming. Her portfolio contains grid-like and nature-based abstraction, horse studies, bodies of water, city, and landscapes that include her unique perspective focused on light and pattern. O’Connor’s work has been included in numerous solo and group exhibitions across the United States.

She is a Copley Master with the Copley Society of Artists and was honored with a Co/So Fellowship and Residency at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown Massachusetts in 2023, and was a 2021 Sam and Adele Golden Foundation for the Arts Resident. She was awarded a Mass Cultural Council Fellowship for her drawings and two ArtsWorcester Material Needs Grants. She has led painting classes in Texas, New Mexico, Italy, Greece, and
throughout New England.

Kat O’Connor is a full-time artist and art instructor living outside of Boston, Massachusetts. Her work can be viewed at www.katopaints.com and @katopaints.