Kathy Osborn

After graduating with a BFA in Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Art and Design and studying commercial art at Pratt, Kathy started her career as a graphic artist and worked at the New York Public Interest Group for six years. She then worked as an editorial illustrator doing assignments for The New Yorker Magazine among others.

At the beginning of her career she was inspired by Edward Hopper, whose work she finds very intimate and mysterious. Particularly the way that the images draw you in, and the viewer becomes a voyeur. Another influence is the Italian Renaissance painter Piero della Francesca—an artist very intimate in his approach to painting and with an insider's view and attention to detail.

Kathy, whose work includes illustrations and book and magazine covers maintains that she "seeks out assignments in which her figures become situated, as if they were in scenes in a play". In fact when viewing Kathy’s work one wonders just who the subject and the observer is. The roles become suddenly confused, as if subject and observer were both characters in a play; the viewer becomes participant, and they in turn are being observed.



Kathy uses shadows, windows, mirrors and masks as barriers to separate her subjects but she in turn breaks many barriers with self irony. Her greatest satisfaction is seeing that a concept, a painting has worked. That it is 'singing'.

Dreams and fantasy are a perfect backdrop for children's books illustrations and Kathy has enjoyed illustrating five children's books to date. She has also just completed a children's project called The Dollhouse, a magical tour of a dollhouse seen from a child's perspective. Again, the observer becomes the one being observed, as The Dollhouse is a whimsical look into the world of miniatures, where there is a story within a story within a story; the little girl in the story discovers an even smaller girl who is playing with a smaller dollhouse, and so on, just like a Russian doll within another Russian doll.