Artist Statement — Kathleen McMullen

From the beginning, art has been my language — a way of listening to the world as much as depicting it. Born in San José, California, I found early solace and independence in the creative act. By fifteen, I was living on my own in a small Los Gatos apartment, painting and observing the subtle rhythms of light, color, and emotion that continue to inform my work today.

At the University of California, Berkeley, I studied painting under Elmer Bischoff, Joan Brown, and David Simpson, and earned degrees in Fine Art and the History of Art. My studies with George Miyasaki opened the meditative precision of printmaking, while art historical work with Peter Selz and Herschel Chipp deepened my understanding of the human impulse to create. Yet even then, I understood that art was more than discipline or craft — it was a way of being in relationship with the unseen.

My life and work have always been shaped by movement — through dance, through landscape, through the inner spaces of emotion and spirit. While at Berkeley, I performed with a small modern dance company, exploring the choreography of line and gesture that would later emerge in my painting. Encounters with Native American dances and ceremonies in Nevada and the Southwest awakened a reverence for the earth as a living presence — an awareness that continues to guide both my imagery and my life’s purpose.

After Berkeley, I worked at Crown Point Press, creating intaglio prints with artists such as Claes Oldenburg, Richard Diebenkorn, Sol LeWitt, and Mel Bochner. These experiences led me to Nathan Oliveira at Stanford, whose mentorship became a profound turning point. From Oliveira, I learned that art is not an end in itself but a form of spiritual practice — a lifelong unfolding that connects the seen and unseen, the human and elemental.

My paintings reflect this sense of connection. Each work is a meditation on the relationship between matter and spirit — between the energy of the natural world and the quiet interior landscape of being. Fire, water, air, and earth recur as elemental languages; birds, foxes, pumas, and whales often emerge as archetypal forces within that dialogue. Some paintings are slow meditations in oil that evolve over the course of a year or more; others in acrylic arrive more swiftly, as intuitive gestures of presence.

My practice is guided by the belief that everything is alive — that color, form, and light are extensions of consciousness, each carrying resonance and meaning. Painting, for me, is a way of honoring that vitality: an act of listening to the world and allowing it to speak through me.

The result is not merely an image, but an offering — a reflection of our shared connection to the earth, the numinous, and the eternal.

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Purchasing Art

Some of my work is for sale. I work on commission as well.