Kati Henning

Kati Henning was born in Columbus, Ohio in 1983 and grew up in the rural areas of Union County. She studied at Ohio Wesleyan University, receiving her BFA, with a focus in painting, in 2006. After earning her degree, she worked in and out of the art industry, including teaching art lessons for over a decade and managing a non-profit art center and studio space. Henning began focusing on her studio career full-time in 2022.

Henning’s lineage of skilled tradesmen deeply informs her practice, with an emphasis on building all aspects of a project by hand. By repurposing objects and tools from her past into her process, she reaches back into her family history while keeping herself grounded in the present. Paint is applied in hundreds of transparent washes using a garden sprayer, allowing images to slowly materialize and become solidified. As a young teenager, Henning lived outside in a tent for weeks at a time, finding refuge from a volatile home life in the surrounding fields. Reference to the countryside from her childhood creeps into the baroque interiors, lending the images an uncanny weight, while her dramatically lit landscapes seem to brim with portent. The locations flicker between realism and theatricality, inviting the viewer to gaze over the brink.