Katherine Sehr
Katherine Sehr’s paintings and drawings are grounded in rhythmic mark-making developed over more than two decades. Working primarily by hand, she builds dense, repeated visual structures that draw on her background in dance, her experience in graphic design and print media, and an ongoing interest in Taoism and obsession.
Sehr grew up in Cornwall, New York, near Storm King Mountain in the Hudson Valley. The area’s wooded terrain and rural landscape formed an early visual environment. Her family also shaped her sense of rhythm. Coming from a line of drummers, she became aware of rhythm as a natural part of her own experience, while her mother encouraged her to begin ballet at the age of nine. Dance remained central throughout her formative years and continues to inform the movement of her marks.
Although her first discipline was dance, a high-school art teacher encouraged Sehr to begin painting. She started drawing and painting regularly at about fifteen, and sold her first painting to a school guidance counselor the following year. She went on to study painting at the University at Buffalo before moving to New York City, where she worked as a graphic designer. She later attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, focusing on Print Media, a program that combined printmaking and graphic design.
Her education established a disciplined working method. Sehr describes her graduate training as comparable to athletic training, a preparation that enabled her to sustain an art practice alongside teaching. She now works as an artist and arts educator in Buffalo Public Schools, where teaching remains closely connected to her studio life. The stress and rewards of the job both feed into the need to make art, and she maintains a practice even after demanding school days.
Sehr primarily works through painting, drawing, writing, and mark-making rather than moving frequently between media. Her visual language has emerged through long-term experimentation in those forms. A recurring motif appears throughout the work, derived from the movements of a dancer. It is neither decorative nor incidental. The marks establish a sense of motion, repetition, pressure, and control across the surface.
The work also reflects the influence of artists including Mark Tobey, Pablo Picasso, Agnes Martin, Sol LeWitt, Frank Stella, Richard Serra, Yayoi Kusama, and Brice Marden. Sehr looks to these artists as predecessors who expanded the possibilities of abstraction, repetition, line, and structure. Their work has reinforced her commitment to continuing a sustained practice rather than following short-term stylistic trends.
Architecture in Buffalo has become another important source of imagery. The city’s built environment has informed numerous pieces, including a large work on paper measuring 113 by 50 inches that required nearly three years to complete. The work was later damaged during installation at a gallery that was not equipped to handle a large paper piece. The experience clarified the importance of professional preparation and care when exhibiting fragile, large-scale work.
Sehr’s practice is deliberately separate from the rapid circulation of AI and computer-generated imagery. She hopes her work communicates hope, while making clear the value of something physically made by hand. “I do not make art for money,” she says. “I make it because I have to.” That compulsion, rather than external validation, sustains the long duration of her process.
Time is the practical foundation of the work. Sehr completes household responsibilities before entering the studio, and protects Friday nights for artmaking while others may be attending openings or events. She describes the balance between teaching and practice simply: she makes time. Music, reading, and television provide space to recharge, with music remaining an especially significant source of motivation.
For Sehr, success is not fixed by sales or recognition alone. As an educator, she finds meaning in teaching young people to recognize art’s value in their lives. As an artist, she sees the work as ongoing and still directed toward a wider audience. Her goal is to continue making the work she has developed, ideally with the opportunity to do so full time.
