Katherine Filice is a painter based in Northern California whose practice is rooted in direct material collaboration with the natural world. Working with ink, oil, charcoal, earth pigments, and found organic materials, she makes paintings shaped as much by landscape, time, and living process as by her own hand. Central to her practice is a method of burying raw canvas in forest environments and excavating it after a year or more — allowing soil, moisture, roots, and seasonal change to mark the surface before she returns to it in the studio. Art writer Nancy Kay Turner has described the resulting works as "sensuous, tactile, and provocative."
Her practice has been shaped by sustained mentorship from New York painter Michael David and by deep engagement with the critical community through the Yellow Chair Salon and NYC Crit Club programs. She is a Kipaipai Fellow. Before devoting herself fully to painting, Filice founded and led a creative studio in Silicon Valley for over thirty years — a foundation that informs her rigorous approach to visual problem-solving and her long attention to the relationship between making and meaning.
Filice's work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia, and is held in private collections worldwide. Solo exhibitions include The Nature of Things at Be Seen Gallery, Lost in the Woods at the Pacific Art League, and Lost & Found at 1202 Contemporary. Her work has been included in the Monterey Museum of Art Biennial, the Triton Museum of Art, New Museum Los Gatos, Sasse Museum, and major art fairs including the San Francisco Art Fair, Future Fairs, and Aqua Art Miami. Her work is also included in E Pluribus Unum, a collaborative installation envisioned and curated by Jane Cornish Smith, now part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Encaustic Art.