KATE
DONOGHUE
DEPARTMENT
PAINTING
ORIGIN
SYLVAN LAKE, MI
Using both personal and found documentary and
advertisement imagery as reference material,
I develop layered vignettes which contemplate
gender identity, objectification, and performativity
within the landscape of American consumerism.
My reference images, ranging from Calvin Klein and
Boy Scout Magazine advertisements to photographs
of my lived environment as I pass through it,
provide a visual vocabulary for addressing the
foreboding expectations of gender roles, beauty
standards, and social behavior. The undefined
space between reference image and painting
fuels my examinations, invitations for invention,
exaggeration, and affect. I am prone to melodrama:
confrontational compositions, cinematic tropes,
and filmic effects that heighten lighting and spatial
conditions, my impulses at times both unsettling
and humorous. The haunting quality of my work
arises from this interplay of overstated realism and
obfuscation—juxtaposing recognizable symbols
of product, desire, and the constructed self with
fragments that destabilize them. The resulting
compositions draw attention to the aftermath of
performative identity within American consumerist
culture, the remains of which live on amongst us,
marked by time yet inescapable. My work holds
both a yearning for earnest nostalgia and quiet,
unrelenting unease, retrospectively reflecting on the
ways in which commercial institutions shape identity
and aspiration, while questioning the boundaries
between truth and artifice.
Window Shopping
2024, Acrylic on canvas, 36" x 48"
She
2025, Acrylic on Canvas, 60" x 84"
Relief
2024, Acrylic on canvas, 36" x 60"
Window Shopping
2024, Acrylic on canvas, 36" x 48"