Meet Katy Kidd | Artist & Musician

We had the good fortune of connecting with Katy Kidd and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Katy, we’d love to hear about how you approach risk and risk-taking.
It took me years to get comfortable with taking risks. I spent half of my life playing small and safe. My son is a pro athlete and we talk a lot about “going big”. He taught me how to question my fears and self limiting beliefs. At one point in my life I told him, more or less, that I was too afraid of screwing up so I just wasn’t going to try. His exact words to me were, “That is so sad.”. Somehow since then I have made a point to live larger and be more courageous. I find that risk taking is a spectrum, like most things in life. I try to be smart and practice walking the situation all the way through in my head before I jump. I can be that kid on the diving board afraid to jump, and also that kid pushing myself into the water. For the most part I can trust myself and the more I practice this, the easier it becomes. In most cases it is me that is standing in my own way. My life changed in a big way 13 years ago when I got sober and found that I was the one weighing my life down. I joined a band for 4 years, despite serious stage fright. As I began to know and trust myself more I became more bold as an artist and a performer. My life opened up and has pivoted in ways I could never have imagined. In that time I have started participating in my own life finally. I’m not sure if it’s part of entering into my 50’s, but when I start having fears around doing something I think of myself as an 80 year old looking back and questioning if I could have been more courageous. I spent most of my adult life married and raising kids. I started at 21 and found myself divorced and an empty nester at 49. I hadn’t been single since then. I hadn’t lived alone, traveled alone, worked alone in 30 some years. I have been a world traveler, but never alone. So, I took myself to Oaxaca in April for a month. I studied a printmaking technique down there. I stayed in a community of sorts and met people of all ages. I “go big” nowadays to fed my art career and my life. I am getting more emboldened as a single female traveler. I have taught myself how to drive on the other side of the car and the road. I have road tripped through Spain and France. I am planning a trip to India. My son and I started a band and I write the lyrics and am the vocalist. I push myself with my art and have become much more relaxed about trying to make a perfect painting every time. I am learning to give myself grace and just trust that I might not get what I want out of life, but I pretty much get what I need. I’ve made it this far. I like to play with the idea of “What if I can’t screw it up” and “who would I be without the limiting beliefs or this imposter syndrome”? In my own quest to live a happier life I developed a short afternoon workshop for creatives struggling with these fears and limitations. If I had taken this workshop when I was younger I would have had a less turbulent time. I wanted to give what I needed. So much of being a professional artist is about the business side of things. Not the mental aspect of it. Imposter syndrome, comparisons, perfectionism, shame, catastrophic thinking and more have plagued me at times in my life. I still screw things up and I also, find success. Regardless of the outcome I find that there is so much to learn in taking the next right action, risky or not.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I am mostly a painter and wheat paste street artist. I have set that aside in the past few months to work as just a printmaker. I have been studying paper lithography, screen printing and woodblock printing for the past 3 years and am trying to find a way to incorporate many techniques in a single art piece. My imagery is often religious, urban, edgy, political and sometimes funny. My road has not always been easy. At times I have sold everything I made, but more often than not the money trickles in. I have a storage until of unsold work to prove it. I lived in Santa Fe for almost 30 years and all the while I worked full time for other artists. I learned how to sew and create patterns from a handbag designer, Susan Todd. I learned hand building from a talented ceramic artist, Jack Charney. I had a stint of working in the field of painting restoration for Andolsek Restoration which completely changed how I work with color. From 2011-2020 I worked for a contemporary western artist, Billy Schenck. I assisted him with all aspects of his business and he ended up being a huge mentor for me, he still is. Over the years, in addition to the painting restoration and restoring a mural I have learned the trade of restoring prehistoric pottery which in incredibly tedious work. My art was my second job and I “nickle and dimed” it, my adult life, working in the evenings and on weekends until Covid changed the world and I was able to focus on my art full time. Biggest lesson is to show up for yourself and your work when you say you will. I would say that 40% of the time I am inspired and giddy, the rest of the time I am just working. It isn’t always some great high or theatrical and profound painting session. Art happens by committing to it. It’s a chop wood carry water thing.

For the past 30 years, I have been creating art in an attempt to explore diversity around the planet. I am fascinate with objects: cars, statues, chairs, fires, offerings, churches, jerry cans, saints, religious iconography, etc. I see these as all ubiquitous objects that we, as humans all over the planet worship to some extent. I am interested in “stuff” and how we define ourselves with “stuff”. Whether spiritual or religious materialism or straight up commercial materialism, I see these as relating to each other in my own way. I throw in pop culture that I relate to and imagery I collected while traveling.

I employ techniques of painting, paper lithography, woodblock and linoleum prints, mono prints, large scale painted murals, wheat paste installments, digital art, photography, screen printing. When I originally started college I was hell bent on being a ceramic artist. This changed when I realized I loved painting more. I have played around with the 3D world sewing fabric, using screen and block prints, tree saps, beeswax, etc… Now and again you might find me at a wheel throwing clay around. I have worked with acrylic and oil paints, house and spray paint. I use water and oil based inks for printmaking. Most recently I’ve started using these incredible super saturated water based pigments I found. I can get occasionally get heavy handed with metal leaf.

My work is in collections at the Denver and Memphis International Airports, The Lama Foundation, and the US Embassy at Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo. I have shown my work in California, Washington, New Mexico, Colorado, Wisconsin, Oregon, and Madrid, Spain. I have painted murals and installed street art in Kenya, Uganda, Jamaica, Spain and multiple states in the US. In 2020-2021 my work was part of a show at The Harwood Art Museum.

“A critic has said of Katy Kidd’s work that it juxtaposes “a certain deliberate flatness reminiscent of Andy Warhol’s Brillo Boxes, which play with two- and three-dimensional allusions in Pop Art, with a street-art sensibility as direct as the “Smack” and “Pow!” graphics in a comic book. In Kidd’s paintings, clashing themes of the oppression of women, especially vis a vis religious dogma, and the institutionalized racism and classicism inherent to 21st-century global capitalism, point to the hypocrisy behind cultural systems that tout such ideals as kindness and compassion.” Kidd’s content is both tongue in cheek and deadly serious.”

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
Denver has excellent museums. I would take them to the Clyfford Still Museum and the Denver Art Museum. The Botanic Gardens is lovely for walking as are many of the parks in Denver: City Park, Wash Park, Sloans Lake and Cheesman Park. I am still exploring the area. Although I grew up here, Denver is quite different than it was in the 80’s. Denver has tons of great food. Redeemer Pizza is insane. I am finding that many of the suburbs have an incredible amount of restaurants, bakeries and grocery stores representing all flavors of the globe. I would take my best friend to the burbs for this.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
Alto Gallery, The Harm Reduction Action Center of Denver. The Art Students League of Denver. My biggest supporters are my kids, Meena and Aspen and my mom.

Website: https://Www.katykidd.org

Instagram: Katykidd2

Youtube: https://youtu.be/roXFoGhWuv8?si=cIkF4DbWisK5WhYm

Other: My son and I released our first song earlier this year. You can find it on YouTube. Our band is named hariKAs.