Kathleen Jacobs

Kathleen Jacobs is an American artist renowned for her lyrical yet minimalist canvases, which engage with both the natural world and late 20th-century minimalism.

Biography of Kathleen Jacobs

Kathleen Jacobs was born in 1958 in Aspen, Colorado. She pursued higher education at Pine Manor College in Boston before moving to Milan in 1980 to study graphic design at the Scuola Politecnica di Design (SPD). The rigorous focus on problem-solving at SPD influenced Jacobs' artistic approach, emphasizing aesthetic analysis and continuous refinement of technique.

Her journey then took her to China, where she spent four years in Beijing and Hong Kong engaging in mark-making through calligraphy and experimenting with a variety of materials and processes.

In 1988, the artist developed a lifelong interest in the tree form, beginning with traditional ink-based landscape drawings and paintings. Upon returning to the United States in 1989, this fascination with trees dominated her artistic vision and practice for the next decade. Notably, she wrapped eighteen aspen trees near Conundrum Creek in Colorado's White River National Forest, creating textured canvases that captured the tree bark's unique grain and contour lines.

Jacobs' recent exhibitions include "ECHOS" at TurnPark Art Space, West Stockbridge, MA (2019); solo shows at ARS Gallery, Honolulu, HI (2019); and Fergus McCaffrey, New York, NY (2019). Her work has also been featured in group exhibitions at The Bonnier Gallery, Miami, FL (2018-2019), Friedman Benda, New York, NY (2018), and the Belvedere Museum, Vienna, Austria (2014). She currently lives and works between New York and Great Barrington, MA.