Katie Metz is an artist in Seattle who grew up on Popcorn Acres, a former dairy farm outside Boulder, Colorado, where a childhood filled with five siblings, endless creativity, and the ever-changing rhythms of rural life sparked her imagination and laid the foundation for her artistic practice. After completing intensive mentorships with established painters in the late 1990s, she developed a strong grounding in traditional painting techniques while refining her own creative voice. Her work began exhibiting throughout Colorado in 2000, and since relocating to Seattle in 2005, her practice has continued to evolve in both method and vision.
Over the past 15 years, Katie has presented annual solo exhibitions and shown her work in galleries across the Pacific Northwest and Southwest. Her paintings, inspired by the natural world and the wonder of everyday moments, are held in private collections worldwide, reflecting her growing presence in the contemporary art community.
“Life itself is the heart of my artistic exploration; I paint my own unique vision of life’s inner and outer landscape. This perspective carries through my well-known cityscape works as well as emerging, intimate interior viewpoints, including my closet series.”
(Image: Courtesy of Katie Metz)
Seattle Refined: How long have you been creating art? What materials do you work with?
Katie: To be honest, I’ve never been great with tracking time, and I’m not sure time is the most meaningful metric when it comes to art anyway. I think I was simply born this way. I believe everyone has a creative spark inside them, which is exactly why looking at a painting can sometimes feel like an act of creation itself. It’s a moment of deeply relating to something outside yourself. For me, the journey of my soul was simply about picking up a physical tool that would allow that inner world to come out, letting me connect both with myself and with others through the making of it. While there are countless tools, media, and even inventive ways to manipulate materials, acrylics are the paint I have truly come to live and work with. It’s a continuous relationship that I am constantly finding new ways to relate to, testing its boundaries, and learning how to manipulate it, so it works with me rather than against me.
(Image: Courtesy of Katie Metz)
Can you tell us about your artistic process and the stages that go into it?
For me, it isn’t a linear or technical checklist; it’s entirely an emotional arc. It starts with a specific pull when I’m out moving through the world, captivated by how things all work together and feel connected, such as with strings of light, dark, curious blocks of shadows with hints of suggestion, and lights weaving in and out of glare and mist. In those moments, it can feel so exciting to me, like a situation of things waving at me for attention, as if they’re acting out something alluring to look at on purpose, and I feel deeply engaged with them, as if we’re having an inner conversation and sharing a story. Sometimes I will snap a photo or write a note to possibly use later in my studio as a foundational reference to start my paintings with. Once that base is scribbled in, I enter into a quiet reverie where I play and seek out the visions in my own memory and use the things I know to build the work upon. The completion of a piece is just learning to let go, knowing when the painting is done, being painted, and only left to be felt.
(Image: Courtesy of Katie Metz)
Tell us about where your inspiration for your art comes from.
I’m not inspired. I am always painting everything all the time inside my head. Inspiration isn’t a spark I have to chase; it is just a constant, unbroken flow through me. I tend to talk about cityscapes a lot, only because I’ve done so many of them over the years, but my mind is constantly painting absolutely everything I look at: the houses in my neighborhood, the windows hiding behind the shrubbery, the quiet corners of places, the way a wire reflects light in sections. I feel silhouettes and glimpses of people, birds, trees, things of all things, and all that presence yelling, “paint me!”
(Image: Courtesy of Katie Metz)
Is there a specific theme to your art or something you gravitate toward the most?
While cityscapes have been an ongoing theme for me, at this point, I use them as a practice and don’t even really see the ‘city’ anymore. I feel life, presence, and a soul even in structures and objects, and there’s something in me that wants to bring that out, like painting a portrait of a person. It’s almost as if I have to keep painting the city until I fully hear it and I feel it, and there’s always something more I need to say with it.
Ultimately, I gravitate toward a variety of things, and it usually comes down to a balance between what I know and what I don’t know. When I gravitate toward what I know, like the cityscapes, it’s because I want to be in a familiar place. Having that grounded practice allows me to look further into the things I don’t know, and gives me the space to think about what I want to explore later.
Other times, I gravitate toward the entirely unfamiliar. I don’t look at it as experimenting; it’s more about quietly allowing a creation around an unknown thing to happen just to see what will emerge from the feeling I get inside when I’m looking at it. Right now, I’m quietly and privately gravitating much more toward that unknown, creating a space for myself to be far more immersed in it as I move forward.
(Image: Courtesy of Katie Metz)
Do you have one piece of art that is extremely special to you?
I do, but it actually isn’t one of my own paintings. Years ago, when I first moved to the city, my next-door neighbor knew I was a painter and was excited to show me a piece of art he had saved from an elderly woman he really loved. It was a childlike, colored chalk pastel drawing on a flattened brown paper grocery bag.
At the time, before I even painted cityscapes, my brain was fully immersed in the feelings of the new city life around me, and I was desperately creating things around that, trying to find a way to bring it out. I was painting in a traditional, familiar way, but it wasn’t working for this new setting. It needed something to ‘zuz’ it up and make it feel the way I actually felt it. Looking at her piece, a door suddenly opened. Those dancing white lines spoke to me. I went back to my studio, realized there was white primer beneath the paint on my panels, and took a razor blade to the surface. By scratching and drawing down to find the white underneath, I created lines that gave the piece a gritty, structural, energetic connection. A sort of scribbley grit and vavoom that a city can feel like. That brown paper bag drawing still hangs with me today. It is incredibly precious because it was the exact spark that allowed me to start speaking with my own voice.
(Image: Courtesy of Katie Metz)
Can you share a significant life experience that has deeply affected your art?
The story I just shared about the brown paper bag drawing is certainly one of the top experiences that has affected my art the most. But more recently, the most impactful shift has been a personal decision to move away from things that diluted my presence, and my internal capacity has grown immensely. Showing up in the studio with this kind of clarity has brought out a new sense of bravery in me to step even further into the unfamiliar, trusting the process completely. It’s not about changing what came before, but rather opening up a new frequency so the work and I can continue to have a deeper, unbroken conversation.
If we want to see more of your work, where can we find it?
I often hear from collectors that they find my work everywhere they go, especially when in a city. Living with a piece just opens up a certain way of seeing.
But you can also physically find the work here: I am represented in Seattle by the Seattle Art Museum (SAM) Gallery. My work is also held in various collections around the area, so keep your eye out! You might come across one!
To view my current collections and digital archive, or to inquire about a commission, you can visit katiemetzstudio.com. Studio visits are welcome by appointment, and you can reach out to me directly through the contact page on the site. You can also follow along on Instagram and Facebook at @katiemetzstudio and under the hashtag #katiemetzstudio. If you want the earliest look at new paintings before they go anywhere else, I also send out a Sunday email to a community I call my Art Guardians. You can join that list right on my website homepage through the Art Guardian portal.
(Image: Courtesy of Katie Metz)
What is next for you? Is there anything you’re working on that you’re really excited about?
Well, I like to say there is more where that came from. I do continue to practice with my familiar cityscape subject, but at the same time, I’m quietly and patiently stepping into that unfamiliar, exciting territory. I’m mostly keeping myself in a one-on-one with it right now, and it feels exciting to know something new is coming. But, if you want to be notified as those things unfold, the best place is to hop onto my email list. I write to my Art Guardians most Sundays when I’ve gathered a few thoughts, images, or little mini-situations from the week that I enjoy sharing. It’s a random mix of art and insights on looking at daily life, and it is always where new work is available to collect first.
Lastly, how do you take your coffee? (We ask everyone)
I make my morning coffee at home, always pretending I’m a busy barista in a coffee shop, which makes it more fun. I add boiling water to my Moka pot coffee, creating a dark Caffe Americano. Later, if I have a second cup, I’ll add frothed soy milk, monk fruit, and cinnamon spice. The ultimate blend for artist fuel!
About ‘Artist of the Week’: This city is packed with artists we love to feature weekly on Seattle Refined! If you have a local artist in mind that you would like to see featured, let us know at hello@seattlerefined.com. And if you’re wondering just what constitutes art, that’s the beauty of it; it’s up to you! See all of our past Artists of the Week in our dedicated section.
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