Artist Spotlight: Katelyn Ledford

Abigail Ogilvy Gallery is proud to bring Katelyn Ledford’s hyperrealistic, deconstructed paintings to Spring/Break Art Show this March. Ledford’s artwork contemplates the ways digital technologies dominate our contemporary image-making, especially portraits. She seeks a mode of painting that can slow down the viewers and make them consider our image-saturated, online-obsessed, contemporary reality within the framework of portraiture. Recently, we had the pleasure to engage with Ledford in a conversation about her process of art-making, the pervasiveness of social media, and her candid advice to emerging artists.

Abigail Ogilvy Gallery (AOG): When did you first discover the arts, and why did you decide to pursue it?

Katelyn Ledford (KL): I grew up in the suburbs of Birmingham, Alabama where there was just about nothing going on by way of contemporary art, so I was truly ignorant about the arts besides the highlights in art history. I’ve been practicing Photorealism since I was a kid, but I didn’t start learning about contemporary art until I was in undergrad, and even that was extremely limited. I learned the most through the internet, artist friends, and mentors about what it means to be an artist and find your individual practice in the 21st century.

I don’t have a clear moment when I decided to pursue it as a career because art-making has always been a part of me. It’s what I did for fun as a kid despite not knowing people could make careers out of making art and what that even looked like. I definitely became more serious about it while studying fine arts in undergrad and realizing the hustle it takes to make it a career.

AOG: What does your creative process look like? Do you have any routines or rituals?

KL: I’m an image collector— screenshots from my phone, random Google searches, photos of TV shows, anything that gives me a gut feeling. Sometimes I’ll see an image and the narrative immediately jumps into my head, while others are a slow boil to figure out how they can create a dialogue with other images. I’ll create multiple rough sketches in Photoshop using a few of the images, which typically include female figures. Every sketch and idea ends up becoming a portrait, even if it is completely de-constructed. The sketches are just the groundwork though as they change quite a bit once it’s roughed out on the canvas since I work in many layers. My paintings can be labor intensive, which means I’m looking at them a lot. Because of this, I go through phases of being frustrated with the image dialogue and as a result, I end up altering, modifying, and destroying parts. The fun usually happens then when I feel the need to squeeze paint from the tube directly on the canvas or use a quick slash of paint on top of a meticulously painted area. 

AOG: Much of your work speaks to digital technologies and social media. How do you, as an artist, feel about social media? How has it affected your creative process?

KL: As an artist, I love social media. As a female, I hate it. As an everyday person, I hate it. All of these mixed emotions play into the narratives and dialogues within my paintings. Digital technologies are undeniably a part of the average life; therefore, they inextricably influence how I make and see paintings. 

AOG: What is your favorite reaction when someone sees your work? How do these reactions influence your work, if at all?

KL: Any reaction is a favorite reaction to me. Indifference, a lack of reaction, means nothing sparked any feeling in the viewer. I want viewers to be able to feel something visceral, have a moment, gain a unique experience­— no matter how that manifests itself in the spectrum of reactions. 

AOG: What advice would you give to a young artist who wants to follow in your footsteps?

KL: Build your community and hustle 24/7. The art world can be unruly and untamed, so having a community to support you and share information with is priceless. From art-making habits while you’re young and/or still in the safety-net of academia because once you’re out, everything will try to get in your way of art-making and distract you. Also, find peers and mentors whose opinions and advice you value and listen to their words while ignoring the toxic voices of others. 

For more Katelyn Ledford’s works, visit Spring / Break Art Show 2020 from March 3 - 9, 2020
625 Madison Avenue, New York, NY