KAT FURTADO

ARTIST BIO

Kat Furtado is a contemporary, mixed-media artist from San Diego, California. She specializes in abstraction and creating ethereal, expressive art. Kat is a certified and licensed Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP) with a Master's of Art in Communication Science and Disorders. Her background as an SLP informs her artistry. Storytelling, emotions, and recurrent themes of humanity are woven with care into her work. To Furtado, creating art is an act of non-verbal communication and is validation of the human experience. Being that communication is the only true link between sentient beings, Furtado considers the creation of art to be an essential communicative endeavor.

Furtado became a mother in 2015. The transformation within motherhood was the catalyst for her third career (SLP, motherhood, artist), wherein she realized that parenting two small children required her to do the bravest thing she could imagine: something new. She became a full-time artist in December of 2020.

Furtado has sold out two self-released twenty-plus collections of original small works upon their releases, as well as print collections. She has collectors of small and large works worldwide. Her artwork was featured in virtual juried exhibitions through Roaring Artist Gallery, Arts to Hearts Project, and the Woman United Art Movement's Inaugural Exhibit. In October of 2021, she successfully self-released her first full product line featuring her illustrative work. Furtado completed an artist residency through the Artist Mother Podcast Community in March of 2022.

When she isn’t creating art, she can be found cuddling with any combination of her two kids and two rescued pets. True to motherhood, there is always someone on her lap, and also true to motherhood, she doesn't really mind.

ARTIST STATEMENT

My life’s work as an artist is discovering where storytelling, visual language, and sense of self intersect. I’m fascinated by imagery that can only be identified in the right context, imaging, or experiences. Recent artwork has incorporated interpretations of medical imaging – scans of my own eyes, breasts, vocal folds, and uterus from different times in my life. This pays tribute to my career as a medical professional (a Speech-Language Pathologist) and is a nod to our own beautiful limitations, abilities, and the bodies we inhabit. My textured mixed-media reliefs also embody organic, oceanic, and botanical shapes reflecting my life in Southern California, as well as the figurative and anatomical structures of human forms. I love the juxtaposition of soft textures and hard lines, transparency versus opacity, and motion in dialogue with stability. Circles are common in my work and represent continuity, change, momentum, and whole-person perspective. Each piece I create is a carefully unfolding narrative carrying the observer, reflecting the resilience and expanse of the human spirit.

The values of wonderment and interconnectedness permeate my life and art. This is why I have adopted the process of composing tactile collage art which lifts from two-dimensional surfaces. I use sculpting media, paper, transparent substrates, handmade monoprints, stitching, and all forms of paint. I live for the possibility of what could be. I approach art with the scientific curiosity of my clinical field: I ask why, and I am empowered by the process of seeking answers. I consider myself a curator of potential, an investigator deep in analysis, and an excavator of what exists, unseen. My process is raw and long and involves rest. Time. Layers are carefully created over years until ready to be composed into intimate collages. I meticulously coax the components together, revealing the stories within.


Website: www.katfurtadoart.com
IG: @katfurtadoart