Kathie George
Award Winning Artist & Teacher
Kathie George is a talented artist, a much-sought-after workshop instructor, and the author of five instructional art books. She is experimental and innovative when it comes to her use of media, but works primarily in watermedia. She is best known for developing and teaching the watercolor batik on rice paper technique. Her students rave about her friendly, informative, and energetic approach to teaching.
About Kathie George
When Kathie George was a child, art lessons weren’t offered in school. That didn’t stop her from being interested in the paintings and drawings that she saw her young peers create. In fact, she was so impressed by the work of a particular classmate that she assumed she could never succeed in making art! It wasn’t until she was married that her husband Michael signed her up for a college art class by surprise. Little did he know what he was in for!
That first art class changed their lives forever. From that moment on, Kathie spent any leisure time she could find painting. In 1985, she quit her job and began to devote all of her time to her new career as a professional artist. She paints and teaches all over the world but her studio and home base are in Kettering, Ohio.
Teaching
Kathie loves teaching because it gives her opportunities to show people how they can succeed. She knows what it is like to dream of being an artist so she is highly motivated to help people as they learn how to paint. Kathie understands how exciting and difficult it is to get started with a new art form and specializes in showing her students how to improve their work and embrace their mistakes with a sense of humor.
As a workshop instructor for over 30 years, Kathie is known for her friendly, informative and energetic approach to teaching. It is important to her that her classes are both informative and fun! Her students say “she has an innate ability to know what a student needs and then show them how to get there.” No doubt this is one reason students return to her workshops over and over again.
Kathie is as creative in her teaching as she is about her art! She has published five instructional art books and teaches both in-person and online workshops. She also teaches her popular “Journey” courses, which combine painting workshops with the thrill of travel to exotic places. To date she has travelled to 12 countries, including France, Italy and Morocco. Never one to stagnate, in April 2020, Kathie George led the massive online 30-Day Drawing Challenge, which spread like wildfire and attracted over 800 students worldwide!
Artistic Practice
Kathie George
works in a range of media and loves experimenting with different art-making techniques, from painting and drawing to collage. She thinks it is important to change her routine and keep her work fresh by switching things up regularly! This experimentation and her sensitivity to the potential of the materials around her led her to develop her signature batik watermedia painting technique.
Kathie’s invention of the batik painting technique sprung out of a desire to replicate the visual effects she could achieve through the process of hand-dying fabric. She loved the “look” of the textiles she was making, but the processes involved (and their smells!) were not well suited to someone who was managing a home with a small child. She began applying the wax used in the textile-dying process to rice paper and was amazed by the beauty of the paintings she could create.
“My batik paintings are a direct reflection of who I am,” she writes. “The delicacy of the rice paper resonates with how sensitive I am to the world around me. I seem to notice every little thing, and that shows through both the materials I choose and the ways I interpret nature and figure in my paintings. The soft color, direct shapes, and images are impressions from my mind. My paintings present my view of the world. ”
Kathie particularly enjoys the range of artistic skills and temperaments that are put to work during the creation of a batik painting. “The waxing process appeals to the side of me that likes to work in a controlled way,” she writes. “The washes, on the other hand, appeal to my wild side! With batik painting, you get to be both loose and restrained.”
In addition to publishing five watercolor books, Kathie has written numerous articles for well-known art magazines, such as American Artist, Artist Magazine, Watercolor Magazine, Plein Air Magazine, Sketchbook Artist and Watercolor Artist.
Her award winning work can be found in many corporate and private collections in the US and abroad. She has twice been a finalist in Artist Magazine’s Art Competition (among 14,000 entrants) and her work was featured in their Limited Edition Calendar in 2001, and again in 2007. She’s a signature member of both the Ohio and Florida Watercolor Societies.
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