about catie

catie macwilliams is a contemporary painter whose practice is rooted in storytelling, intuition, color, movement, texture, and mark-making. raised on a small farm in woodstock, connecticut, she grew up in a family of artists where creativity was encouraged as a way of seeing and moving through the world.

her creative path has included pottery, photography, acting in new york city, tattooing, and found-object art. as her children were growing up, creative outlets shifted to gigantic cardboard forts, sewing costumes for school plays she directed, and flower gardens. creating has never felt optional to her; it is a lifeline.

throughout her professional life, macwilliams has supported children, families, and individuals through serious illness, grief, and hospice care. those experiences have deeply shaped the way she understands vulnerability, emotion, and human connection. they taught her how to remain present inside discomfort, notice what is easily overlooked, and stay with what can feel overwhelming rather than turn away from it.

that way of seeing follows her into the studio. macwilliams is drawn to the overlooked and ordinary, and to the emotion, history, and humanity held within the things people move past every day. she often begins without knowing what a painting will become, allowing figures, memories, photographs, found imagery, words, and spontaneous marks to emerge, disappear, and transform.

her experience with vulnerability and exposure has made her especially attentive to what is unseen, unheard, or pushed to the margins. through painting, she creates space for truth, resistance, beauty, discomfort, change, and questions of justice. she is interested in what happens when we stay with difficult things long enough to see them more fully—and in the possibility that attention itself can become an act of care.

for macwilliams, care and creativity are deeply connected. in the studio, she paints what she feels before she has language for it, allowing uncertainty to become part of the work rather than something to overcome.

making art is her way of participating in an ongoing conversation about humanity, connection, and change. she brings to that conversation the same instinct she has carried through her life and work: to be the steady in the ever-wavering.