“Still, what I want in my life is to be willing to be dazzled—to cast aside the weight of facts and maybe even to float a little above this difficult world.”
About
Mary Katherine Ward is an experienced oil painter, currently of wildlife and natural landscapes. She is well known for her mastery of vivid color and magical realism. Over the past several decades Katherine has also done a variety of work in design, art curation, sales, and teaching, as well as portraiture.
Katherine grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, second daughter in a family of five girls. Early on she showed great interest in local flora and especially local fauna: in addition to the family’s cats, horses, and Labrador retrievers, she befriended such creatures as baby alligators, turtles, frogs, and armadillos. Katherine studied art formally at the Art Academy in San Francisco and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the 70s and has been painting ever since.
Soon after graduation from college, Katherine taught elementary school, painted murals and floors in a children’s retail store (Fort Walton, Florida), and began painting portraits – especially portraits of children. Upon meeting her future husband, she moved to La Jolla, California and began traveling with him to Oaxaca, Mexico, from which they ran a business importing local traditional rugs into the United States. Inspired in part by Mexican weaving traditions, Katherine began designing a line of woven and, later on, leather handbags that were marketed and branded under her name and sold in Nordstrom’s stores. She subsequently designed and marketed a line of children’s furniture, and also crafted floral designs for occasions such as weddings, bar mitzvahs, and formal parties. Jane Goodall, Diane Feinstein, and Barbara Boxer were among Katherine’s floral customers.
In support of her daughter’s passion for theater, Katherine’s artistic endeavors in California also extended to set and costume design and fabrication. Upon moving to Colorado with her husband in 2013, she shifted her fondness for the Pacific Ocean’s sea lions, seals, and such and began painting mountain scenes and fauna. She still delights in this work.
Ms. Ward is to this day a wildlife lover, hosting deer, bear, elk, fox, turkeys and other birds and creatures around her home in Conifer, Colorado, together with Philip, her husband of more than three decades. She remains an avid traveler.