KATHY CORNWELL

ARTIST BIO

Kathy Cornwell is a Northern Virginia–based mixed media artist whose work explores discovery, intuition, shape, and visual surprise. Through layered collage and printmaking techniques, she creates compositions that invite viewers to slow down and uncover hidden details, echoing her lifelong fascination with advent calendars, lockets, and other visual “surprise treats.” Shape plays a central role in her process, serving as both a guiding structure and an expressive element that transforms each piece into a dynamic conversation between order and play.

Cornwell has exhibited widely in juried and curated shows across the United States and online. Recent highlights include having 12 of her works featured in an exhibition at the NIH Clinical Center’s East Gallery in Bethesda, MD, and being included in a landmark survey exhibition, Women Artists of the DMV. Her artwork has earned recognition as a two-time finalist in the Women United Art Prize (2023: Printmaking, 2024: Collage) and as the 3rd place winner in 2025 (Collage).

Her work has been featured in numerous publications, including Women United Art Magazine, Contemporary Collage Magazine, New Visionary Magazine, Suboart Magazine, and others. Her practice has been further supported by an artist residency at Wildacres Retreat in North Carolina.

Cornwell is represented by Broadway Gallery in the Washington, DC, region. She actively engages with the creative community through artist talks, demonstrations, and interviews. Cornwell’s work continues to evolve as an exploration of shape, intuition, material play, and the desire for discovery. Each piece reflects her commitment to creating art that sparks curiosity and connection.

ARTIST STATEMENT

The first time I created a freeform swirl—drizzling paint from the end of a stick—I was hooked. I fell in love with the organic, expressive, gorgeous messy results. Each swirl is completely unique. When I make swirls, I’m able to let myself go, tap into my intuitive core, and create without self-censoring. And I love to marvel at the results! Perhaps that’s why I keep returning to this shape: swirls feel like an affirmation of my truest self.

A swirl is deceptively simple—just one continuous line—but it contains boundless complexity. It’s a symbol of movement, growth, and change, a reminder of the dynamism and complexity of life itself. In my Swirl series, that simple gesture becomes a springboard for layered exploration.

My process is a happy thruple of monotype printmaking, paper cutting, and collage. I begin many of my artworks by selecting one of my paint swirls to be the main figure and creating an SVG file of it for my cutting machine. I delve into my huge stash of hand-pulled monotypes, which I cut and layer using an iterative collage-cut-collage method: I cut, collage, re-cut, and rearrange until unexpected harmonies emerge. Both the main figure and the background become alive with hidden details—shapes tucked within shapes, colors shifting where layers overlap, earlier compositions peeking through later ones.

I design my work to offer “visual treats” that reward close looking, echoing the surprise and delight I feel while making them. The swirl is my anchor: a form that holds space for endless reinvention. In every variation, it carries the same pulse of energy that first captivated me—the joyful, messy, intuitive movement of a line dancing through space. My hope is that viewers will feel that same sense of vitality, and perhaps, a spark of their own unfiltered creative core.