Kate Javens

Kate Javens was born in Missouri and spent her childhood in Japan, Mexico, and the bicoastal United States.  She attended the Pennsylvania State University and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.  Javens is a Golden Foundation Residency Fellow, a three-time MacDowell Fellow, a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Painting Fellow, and a Pew Fellowship in the Arts Disciplinary Winner in Painting.  Her works are held in private and public collections including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Museum, the Palmer Museum of Art at the Pennsylvania State University, the Telfair Museum of Art, the Blanden Art Museum, and the Connecticut College Print Collection.  A monograph, Kate Javens, American Beasts, was published by the Blanden Museum and distributed by D.A.P..  Kate Javens lives and works in New York City.

Kate Javen’s paintings in oil are stunning both for the breathtaking beauty of her brushstroke as well as for their passionate moral intensity. In a painting style that synthesizes an Old Masters clarity of light with a basis in American naturalism and realism, Javens connects with the viewer by an empathy to her subjects – paintings of animals that are named for, and in fact stand as metaphorical portraits of, figures in American history; persons who represent to Javens an altruism and social activism that deserve to be commemorated.The animal subjects of Javens’ paintings embody to her the inner qualities and essence of the human historical figures that she honors, suggesting that it is not so much the image, but rather the quality of these persons for which they should be remembered.

DOWNLOAD ARTIST CV