Katelyn Colton Ramsey
Artist’s Biography
Katelyn Ramsey’s watercolor paintings capture her lifelong passion for the world of oceans and beaches. Her paintings, large and small, reflect the relaxed and serene feelings of vacation where days are easy, light and happy. She has a natural gift for color, using clear, uncomplicated greens, turquoises, purples and fuchsias to create motion and detail.
Katelyn Ramsey grew up in New Orleans and spent weekends and summers on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. At three years old, she had her own yellow bread box for collecting shells and bits found on the coastline – old bottles and sea glass, pieces of wood and rusted metal, slate, dead crabs, shards of plastic. She insisted on being “the artist” of the family, carrying an old wine box full of art supplies wherever she went. Her high school and college art training was in ceramics and since college she has grown into a full time painter. In 2003 she held her first one-woman show at the World Trade Center in New Orleans.
Katelyn’s trademark is the way she uses color, as if she replicates the hues of undersea life through use of gouache pigments. She paints the spiral shape (similar to a DNA molecule) as an image of the continuity of life and creates circular bubbles to show the gurgling joy of the sea. She sees patterns of color and movement at all times swirling in her vision. Her instincts and training have helped her develop a style that is free and whimsical – both readily identifiable and personal.
In Katelyn’s own words, “I slowly layer paint to build a picture depicting motion. The frames of each picture contain the DNA of the painting. Everything that happens in the painting as far as color and repetition are concerned, is referenced in the outer border of the picture. The spiraling patterns of bubbles are actually fragments of fractals that whisper around the subject matter alluding to unseen currents and movement.”
A sense of amazement and wonder pervades Katelyn’s life and shapes her response to the world. Her goal is to pass on that wonder and joy to those who enjoy her work.
