Artist Bio

Kate Manire was born and raised in Rye, New York. She began making oil paintings as a Fine Arts Major at Vanderbilt University, where she created light-driven nocturnes of transient or abandoned areas of Nashville. After graduation, she studied at Columbia University’s Advanced Painting Intensive and further developed her interest in urban nocturnal scenes. In the fall of 2012, she moved to Shanghai, China. While her practice has always drawn heavily from photography, Shanghai is where she developed an interest in isolating and close-cropping images taken from her explorations, using them as a catalyst for abstraction in her work.

This collaboration between photography and painting is now at the core of her practice. Upon returning to the United States, Kate entered the Master of Fine Arts program at the New York Academy of Art and graduated in May of 2017. Her recent body of work is devoted to fleeting moments of discovery guided by illumination. Her paintings, drawings and monotypes capture the ability of light to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary. A landscape can become figurative; a flat wall can have depth; a dark room can be infused with joy and wonder. Kate continues to explore the limitless potential of light’s transformative power today.

Kate’s work has been shown in numerous galleries in Nashville, Shanghai, Manhattan, and the Hudson River Valley and her work is in various private collections. Her studio is currently located in Brooklyn, New York.