Katie Hector (b. 1992) in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, is an artist, curator, and writer based near Los Angeles, California. Hector’s studio practice revolves around a series of process-based paintings that layer dye and bleach to create portrait-likenesses that symbolize loss, grief, intimacy, and longing. She earned a BFA in painting from the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University graduating Magna Cum Laude in 2014. Her artwork has been exhibited nationally and internationally garnering her recognition in the form of awards, scholarships some of which include: 2020 Lillian Disney Scholarship, 2019 Arquetopia International Residency, the 2017 Picture Berlin International Residency, the 2016 Merit-Based Scholarship at Urban Glass, the 2014 Scott Cagenello Memorial-Prize, and the 2013 Ruth Crockett Award.
Her portraits of friends, people she's met, and complete strangers are allegories for longing, intimacy, and grief in response to isolation and dissociation. Layering bleach and dye on canvas Hector build's-up and erases sections to create composite likenesses. Painting with bleach and dye instead of traditional media allows her to have a direct conversation with the canvas itself. Within each painting Hector tests the limits of the fibers and the canvas’s ability to retain or let go of pigment. Thus the memory of the surface produces the final after image; an impression of personhood, an uncanny portrait.