Katherine Wirick
I grew up in Ohio and got my BFA in Illustration at the Columbus College of Art & Design. I then spent a year in Ireland studying at the Burren College of Art and earned a Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Fine Art from the National University of Ireland, Galway (now the University of Galway). After working as a graphic designer for two years I entered the MFA program at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, where I discovered my love of teaching. My thesis “No One Is Safe,” a sequential art piece documenting the Kent State Massacre, was purchased by PAFA for their permanent collection and was a centerpiece of their 2016 exhibition “Happiness, Liberty, Life?” For five years I taught painting and drawing in Los Angeles. At the beginning of the pandemic I moved back to Pennsylvania and started a YouTube channel with my husband, creating educational videos about painting and art history. In my studio I work in a range of media and formats, exploring 19th and 20th-century history, masculinity and the male body, grief, disability, war and trauma, and the sublime.
