Kate Brogdon was born in Vienna, Austria, and grew up across the United States, primarily in Idaho. She has lived in multiple countries, each place leaving its mark on her imagery and ideas. After earning her bachelor’s degree at the University of Virginia, she pursued diverse professional paths, most notably serving 25 years as an active duty Marine, while continuing her artistic studies. Her work has been recognized with awards in exhibitions across Southern California, Virginia and virtual platforms. Kate currently lives and works in Virginia.

Statement

My art is about the wide variety of ways people see the world. Growing up a child of immigrants and living in diverse cultures has deeply influenced my creative process. Each place I’ve lived has contributed to how I see and interpret the world, and interactions with people from different backgrounds have heightened my interest in how we form unique perspectives through lived experience. I share this through views of my own history and ideas.

I use my collected experiences, images, and fragments of ephemera to build layered visuals as ways of exploring how I see the world, and by extension, how we construct our worldviews and how those views shape our relationships with each other and our environment. Through photography, collage, and painting, I seek to capture the present moment and also the sense of how it changes, as a memory evolving over time. I work in layers and across media to show the nuances of perception developed by fragments, overlaps, and unexpected juxtapositions. These visual combinations create shades of meaning mirroring the complexities of our world. I create different levels of detail, some seen up close, some only at a distance. In these layers, I illustrate the fluid and multifaceted ways we experience reality. Through photography, collage and painting, I capture shades of meaning mirroring the fluid, multifaceted ways we experience reality.