Kate Breakey is a contemporary artist best known for her hand-colored photographs of nature, including birds, flowers, animals, and insects. She was born in Port Lincoln, South Australia, on 14 th August 1957. She received her Graphic Design Diploma from the University of South Australia in 1978 and a Bachelor’s of Fine Art from the same university in 1981 ( Breakey , 2020 ). She would then go to the University of Texas to pursue a Master of Fine Arts Degree, which she completed in 1991. She went to Austin, Texas, where she pursued a Master of Fine Arts Degree at the University of Texas, which she finished in 1991. She initially taught photography in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas until 1997. She would later move to Tucson, Arizona, in 1999 (Photo Eye, 2020). She has made her living mainly from art exhibitions ( Breakey , 2020 ). Since 1980, her works have featured in over 60 solo displays, and more than 50 group displays in the US, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and France. She is also regularly invited to be a guest speaker and teach throughout the US and internationally.
Kate has used a film camera as her primary photography equipment. Previously, she printed black and white gelatin paper and then hand-color these images (Artnet, 2020). Currently, she takes digital photographs and alters the images using Photoshop and Lightroom first to prepare them before she adds media to each print rendering each piece as a unique object. The media added included pastels and colored pencils. Below are some of her photos that were gotten from her website.
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Nest 12, Digital Archival Pigment Print on silk, Hand embroidered with thread. Framed to 24” X 24”. Variable Edition of 20 (Breakey, 2020)
Cactus VI, Silver Gelatin Photograph, toned, hand-colored with oils & pencils. Image size 9” x 9”. A variable edition of 10 prints. (Breakey, 2020)
Digital Archival Pigment Print, hand-colored with pastel & pencils. Image size varies; 3” x 4” - 4” x 4”. A variable edition of 5 prints (Breakey, 2020).
Still Life, Fish on Plate Silver Gelatin Photograph, toned, hand-colored with oils & pencils. A variable edition of 10 prints (Breakey, 2020).
Sparrow, Unknown Species II Silver Gelatin photograph, hand-colored with oils & pencils. Image size 32” x 32”. A limited number of 10 variable editions available (Breakey, 2020).
The combination of inspiration and circumstances influences Kate’s work. From the above images, we can see her work about nests, cactus, eggs, flowers, and other material resulting from her interest in nature. Her photo collections depict different animals, birds, plants, stones, and other captivating natural phenomena. Her latest work, named ‘Out of darkness,’ which has been showcased in various exhibitions, has resulted from a metaphor for dramatic personal events that have recently changed her life ( Lenscratch , 2020 ). Kate takes photos using a camera and then hand-colors them. Her earlier use of a film camera meant that her photos were black and white negative prints which she would later hand-color. With the new technology, she takes digital photos that she modifies by using photo editing tools. She will then make each photo unique by adding media to each print rendering.
The photo Digital Archival Pigment Print, hand-colored with pastel & pencils, is the best picture in my opinion. The uniqueness in the design of the egg is captivating enough. Its rare combination of colors makes it attractive to see. The dots around the egg are unlike any other common egg one would see. The egg’s position on the photo draws an observer’s focus to the egg, hence the attention paid to the egg’s tiny details. The picture’s background fits in well with the photo as it is less captivating, leaving all the attention to the egg. The inside set of frames contain a shiny wooden look that conforms with the natural setting being portrayed by Kate. They fit in well with the outside set of frames that contain the brown color of the wood. The combination described above brings out nature at its best. It makes the piece unique enough to stand out among the rest of the photos.
Kate selects images from many different times, places, and other past work. She says, “I shoot all the time, wherever I go, often without anything in mind except to document my life and my observations.” She would revisit previously taken photos that she forgot about to come up with new photos.
“ Because I get so busy with my large and often labor-intensive hand-colored work, I have had to ‘file’ most of my negatives, and so I had forgotten about many of these images that I’m just now rediscovering. It’s been very satisfying to give older images a new life. This work is quite eclectic because the selection includes classical still life, landscapes, nudes, as well as all my various biological series (animals and flowers), but combined, they make for a visual diary of a lifetime of ‘looking’” ()( Joseph Bellows Gallery , 2020 ).
The kind of work identified in the quote shows how nature motivates her work. Others have also been featured talking about her work. Joseph Bellows says that “Kate’s photographs tell of her desire to tenderly record the beautiful bodies now in a transition towards decomposition and disintegration” ( Joseph Bellows Gallery , 2020 ). In this context, Bellows was referring to Kate’s collection known as Small Deaths.
Kate’s work can be found in various public collections. It includes the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, the Australian National Gallery in Canberra, the Museum of Photographics Arts in San Diego, the Museum of Fine Arts, Mexican Photography, the Wittliff Galley of South Western, the Austin Museum of Art, and Houston (Artnet, 2020). They have collected over 150 works by Beakey since 1999.
References
Artnet. (2020). Kate Breakey . https://www.artnet.com/artists/kate-breakey/
Joseph Bellows Gallery. (2020). Kate Breakey . https://www.josephbellows.com/artists/kate-breakey/biography
Breakey , K . (2020). Kate Breakey . https://www.katebreakey.com/
Lenscratch. (2020). Contemporary fine art photographers . LENSCRATCH. https://lenscratch.com/photographers/
Photo Eye. (2020). Kate Breakey . Photo-Eye. https://www.photoeye.com/gallery/index.cfm
