August Artist of the Month
Meet Kate Heald
Kate Heald grew up with her two sisters and two brothers in the country in Uxbridge, Massachusetts. “We did everything together and my parents gave us opportunities to try many activities. Something different stuck for each of us. For me, it was art, I’ve been a life long artist ever since I was a little one. It has always been my outlet.” Heald recalls her favorite gift ever was a big box of art supplies with various new papers, brushes, tools and mediums: “a menagerie of wonderful new things.” At Wheaton College she planned on majoring in chemistry or biology but was enthralled with her academic drawing course and considered biological illustration. She decided to go all in on art and graduated as a Studio major with a minor in Art History. She has taken classes at the MFA both during and after college.
After graduating, Heald looked for a job in the art world but soon realized that she could not support herself working at a gallery so took a corporate job at a technology research company, AMR Research, where she worked for eight years: she always painted on the side. “I have always left my art area set up, I like things neat and tidy so I can easily do something daily. If I don’t have time to work on a painting, I’ll make something small, like a card.” Heald married and became a busy stay-at-home mom for her 2 daughters for 19 years. She brought her skills to the volunteer circuit doing everything from room parent to CCD teacher to fundraiser. During this time, she did a lot of commission work and as her children got older began taking classes again.
Some of Heald’s most important mentors have been her professor and advisor in college, Vaino Kola and her first art teacher Margaret Kalousdian. Kalousdian “had such a compassionate and wonderful way of explaining things and she taught me to never skip any steps in my drawing to painting process. She had a cork cylinder and everyone new to her studio learned to draw it at their first class: These core principles really stuck.” Watercolor also stuck for Heald: “I love the fast pace of (it), I don’t like to wait for other painting mediums to dry. Although I am a fairly controlled painter, the flow of watercolor allows for the unexpected.” Her subjects “are derived from things I love: beautiful flowers, landscapes, pets…something that catches my eye and brings me joy; I’m always saying, “Hang on, I have to take a picture
For the past several years Heald has been working for Caskata, a local company that sells beautiful dinnerware, glassware and linens for the tabletop. She initially started in the decorating studio where she decorated porcelain plates by hand. In the last year the company has outsourced this work due to the inability to source raw goods necessary to make the wares in-house. Heald’s role at the company has grown along with the company and they are just about to move their headquarters to the old Stuart Swan building in Wellesley.
Heald is an exhibiting member of the WSA and the Falmouth Artist Guild, where they also have a home. She exhibits at the Falmouth Art Center, West Falmouth Library and the South Shore Art Center. She treasures her group The Watercolor Connection in Natick: “It’s a wonderful group of artists (all women now); before the pandemic we met at St. Paul’s Church in Natick had lunch and painted together.” Heald has moved away from commission work and paints “mostly for myself: I try to bring out what initially caught my eye, something much more than what I see in the iPhone picture. The photo is never the same as what is in my eye.”
