Kathryn Geismar is an artist and psychologist.  She is the recipient of three Mass Cultural Visual Art Fellowship Grants, residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, Castle Hill, Foundation House, and Manship, and numerous awards. Her work has been featured in the New Talent, New England at the St. Botolph Club in Boston, the Danforth and Fitchburg Museums in Massachusetts, and the Bristol Art Museum in Rhode Island.  Cate McQuaid in the Boston Globe wrote: “Kathryn Geismar’s portraits of gender-queer and identity-fluid young adults…are painted on layers of clear film, simultaneously concealing and revealing…Their shifting, labile structures reflect how Geismar’s subjects construct their identities on their own terms and how her effort to witness them is a work in progress.” 

STATEMENT

I am a mother-artist whose work explores identity, individuation, and the complexity of parental love. I explore topics of separateness and relationship that define me and my children as individuals and as family. My on-going project began as a way to engage with my transgender child’s transition; it now also includes my cis-gender child’s unfolding identity as well as my own identity which has been indelibly changed by motherhood, partnership, cancer, and time.  

The (m)other project consists of both drawings and paintings. In the drawings, I create individual life-sized portraits of my children in graphite on translucent sheets of drafting film. The drawings are then overlapped, held together by grommets which allow the two portraits to be attached at the top, and otherwise float free. The grommets have a utilitarian function and also reference piercings, body markings, and jewelry. Figures and faces fluidly merge and separate, hidden and revealed in equal measure.  

In the paintings, themes of time and memory intersect with questions of identity. Old self-portraits from childhood are sometimes backdrops for current embodiments of self; partial portraits appear at the edges of the canvases, simultaneously leaving and entering the pictorial space. Faces are stacked, one on top of the other, to create a totemic feel to separate moments of coalescence. The identities appear to be changing before our eyes, escaping the known boundaries of the canvas. 

Solo Shows

2021 Under Construction, Bromfield Gallery, Boston , MA.
2019 The Myth of Gravity, Bromfield Gallery, Boston, MA.
2018 Legends and Myths, Glen Urquhart School Gallery, Beverly, MA
2015 Wave Studies, Inside Out Gallery, Somerville, MA

Curatorial

2021 Give and Take, with Alexandra Sheldon. Kathryn Schultz Gallery, Cambridge, MA
2020 Exquisite Corpse, with Stephanie Vecellio. Inside Out Gallery, Somerville, MA
2018 Bodies of Knowledge, Kathryn Schultz Gallery, Cambridge, MA

Awards

2022 Nancy Baldwin Prize for Drawing, Concord Art Association

2022 Juror’s Choice Award for painting, Concord Art Association

2020 Nancy Baldwin Prize for Drawing, Concord Art Association
2020 Somerville Arts Council Visual Arts Grant
2018 Juror’s Choice award, Members Juried II, Concord Art Association
2017 Roddy Prize, 18th Annual Roddy, Concord Art Association
2015 Merit Grant and Residency, Vermont Studio Center, July
2014 Juror’s Choice Award, Cambridge Art Association Platinum Show

Education

BA with Honors in Studio Art, Brown University

PhD in Developmental Psychology, Harvard University

Selected Group Shows

2022 Member’s Prize Show, Cambridge Art Association, Cambridge, MA. Juror: Beth Kantrowitz 2022 Members Juried I, Concord Art Association. Juror: LaiSun Keane 2021 Member’s Prize Show, Cambridge Art Association, Cambridge, MA. Juror: Ben Sloat
2021 Renew, Bromfield Gallery, Boston, MA
2021 Members Juried I, Concord Art Association. Juror: Kirstin Lamb
2020 Two-Person Show with Kim Triedman, NE Biolabs, Ipswich, MA
2020 Members Juried II, Concord Art Association, Concord. Juror: Liz Shepherd
2020 Members Juried I, Concord Art Association, Concord. Jurors: Emily Eveleth and Penn Young
2019 Fragments: Collaging the Material World, Chandler Gallery, Cambridge. Juror: Annie Silverman
2019 20th Annual Frances N. Roddy, Concord Art Association, Concord. Juror: Josephine Halvorson, BU
2019 National Prize Show, Cambridge Art Association, Cambridge, MA. Jurors: Camilo Alvarez and Steve Locke
2019 All You Need Is…, Bromfield Gallery, Boston
2019 Member Juried II, Concord Art Association, Concord. Juror: Leah Triplett Harrington.
2019 Members Prize Show, Cambridge Art Association, Cambridge. Juror: Lisa Crossman, Fitchburg Art
2019 Small Works, Chandler Gallery, Cambridge. Juror: Hilary Tait Norod.
2019 Members Juried I, Concord Art Association, Concord. Jurors: Gail Boyajian and Gerry Bergstein.
2019 Red, Cambridge Art Association, Cambridge. Juror: Dan Byers, Carpenter Center for Visual Arts.
2018 Fairy Tale/Scary Tale, Brickbottom Art Association, Somerville. Curator: Pauline Lim.
2018 19th Annual Roddy Competition, Concord Art Association. Juror: Sarah Montross, De Cordova Museum.
2018 New England Collective IX, Galatea Fine Art, Boston. Juror: Marni Elyse Katz
2018 NE Artists Juried Competition, Bromfield Gallery, Boston.
2018 Member’s Juried II, Concord Art Association, Concord. Juror: Abigail Olgilvy
2018 Members Prize Show, Cambridge Art Association, Cambridge. Juror: Joseph Carroll, Carroll and Sons
201718th Annual Roddy Competition, Concord Art Association. Juror: Ali Ringenberg, Sloane Merrill Gallery
2017 National Prize Show, Cambridge Art Association. Juror: Nick Capasso, Fitchburg Art Museum
2016 Red Biennial, Cambridge Art Association, Cambridge. Juror: Joseph Ketner II, Emerson College.
2016 Escape: A Group Show, Sloane Merrill Gallery, Boston.
2016 17th Annual Roddy Competition, Concord Art Assocation. Juror: Katherine French
2015 Off the Wall, Danforth Art Museum, Framingham. Juror: Katherine French, Danforth Art Museum
2015 National Prize Show, Cambridge Art Association. Juror: Catilin Doherty, Broad Art Museum
2014 Platinum, Cambridge Art Association Biennial Show, Cambridge. Alise Upitis, MIT List Visual Art Center
2013 New Talent/New England, St. Botolph Club, Boston.
2013 Back to Back, Sloane Merrill Gallery, Boston. Jurors: Ali Ringenberg, Damon Lehrer, Jonathan Nix