Studio Space: Kathy Wright

It was down to three choices: doctor, lawyer or architect. Kathy Wright, 45, grew up in a Macon, Ga., household dominated by science and medicine. Her father was an oral surgeon. Her mother was the head of the local nursing college. And her two brothers would become doctors.

But Wright was looking for an artistic escape. She initially found it at Loyola University in Chicago and chose a liberal arts track. Unfortunately, her medical-leaning parents weren’t going to pay for her studying art. So she chose the best of both worlds: architecture.

“It was definitely a compromise but I loved the craft and design of architecture,” says Wright. “It was very sculptural, but my primary interests was always in the academic and design-oriented parts.”

Wright transferred to Georgia Tech and earned a master’s at Harvard University Graduate School of Design in 1998. Wright pursued an architectural career and worked for a few firms in Boston and in London. But something was wrong.

“Something didn’t feel right,” says Wright. “Something wasn’t jiving. My grandfather has always had a condo here on Siesta Key and we’d always visit growing up to go to the beach. I visited again in 2001 and just never left.”

Wright’s artistic career was launched in 2002 after she took a transformative landscape painting workshop through the Ringling College of Art and Design.

“The first three paintings I did in that workshop were horrifying, but the fourth one I just kind of got it and I just knew this was what I wanted to do,” says Wright.

Now Wright spends her days painting Impressionistic Florida landscapes. A favorite subject is the Everglades, for which she received a $25,000 Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant in 2009. For Wright, the swamps of the Everglades are more than just a series of greens and browns — she inserts a multitude of colors that shine off the surface of the water. 

“I look at art continuously,” says Wright. “I have an art library here in my studio and an even larger one at home. It’s all about visual inventory. I’m a chronic looker.”