ARTIST STATEMENT
Kauffman is known for abstract yet allusory paintings. She works in series, painting groups of people swimming, sharing meals around a table, lounging and listening to music and protesting for civil and human rights. Her recent series, Jeopardy, focuses on groups of endangered or extinct species: bees and butterflies, big cats affected by border walls, birds and ocean creatures affected by the destruction of their habitat and climate change.

“My paintings exist in the space between abstraction and figuration where amorphous shapes and fluid color reflect my response to the world around me.”

She researches topics, often creating digital collages, adding and subtracting images and manipulating the composition and intensity of color until a dense, saturated emerges, establishing a reference for the paintings. Layers of transparent oil washes on canvas become the base for gestural brushwork, she builds a fluid, vibrant surface that conveys both beauty and tension.

To Viewing Room 

BIOGRAPHY
Kauffman, a visual artist based in Washington, DC, exhibits in local galleries and exhibition spaces including the Studio Gallery, Schlesinger Art Center, Athenaeum, The Clinical Center Art Program at NIH, McLean Project for the Arts, Glen Echo Galleries, Touchstone, Hillyer, Zenith, Joan Hisaoka Healing Arts Center, Studio 1469, Target Gallery and regionally at artspace and Annmarie Sculpture Garden and Art Center. She is the recipient of Juror’s Awards from Anne Reeve of Glenstone and Marybeth Kelley of the Hirschhorn, the Linda and Douglas Scholarship from the Corcoran College of Art + Design, a merit-based artist grant from the Vermont Studio Center Artist Residency program and DCCAH fellowship and juried exhibition grants. Her work is in private and public collections; the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities Fine Art Acquisition Program and the Art and Healing Program/Inova Schar Cancer Institute. She is affiliated with Art Watch, DCAC, Washington Project for the Arts and Studio Gallery where she served on the Board of Directors. Kauffman earned a BFA from the University of Kansas and studied at the University of Texas and the Corcoran College of Art + Design.