Katie Heller Saltoun
Katie Heller Saltoun is a Brooklyn based figurative artist focusing on what it feels like to be a mother and working artist. She received her BFA in painting and drawing from the University of Michigan with a focus on the figure. Katie then completed her MA in Art Education from Teachers College, Columbia University. She taught for 16 years at Great Neck South High School in an art department comprised of 5 female practicing artists and educators. Katie recently completed a residency at the School of Visual Arts and is an active participant of the SVA Residency Alumni group. She is part of Teleportal Gallery, an international cohort of artists which has an upcoming show in NYC called Ephemeral Existence. She was included in the juried show ‘The Figure’ by The In Art Gallery and was included in a group show with Tiger Strikes Asteroid. Katie has also been an active member of the NYC Crit Club participating in group critiques and meeting with different artists and gallery owners. Katie is a wife and mother of 3 and her current focus reflects her family’s time together during the pandemic. Her work takes place in spaces where her family rests after a long day. Katie explores her anxieties about motherhood, keeping her family safe, as well as her need for a break. The contemporary art world has begun to value the strength of motherhood with artists like Billie Zangewa, Alice Neel, Madeline Donahue, and Loie Hollowell. Joan Semmel defined feminist art as “art which in some way, however varied, validates the female experience.” Billie Zangewa, a South African artist uses tapestries to convey motherhood’s under-appreciated role as a feminist act, celebrating the ‘regular’ tasks as “daily feminism.” Motherhood is complex and today’s evolving landscape allows for important examination of how mothers feel recognized and seen at home, as artists, and more broadly.
