Kathleen George
If you are going to be extraordinary, you can’t worry about the mustard you don’t have in the fridge. —Mary Oliver
Kathleen George is passionate about art, and social justice. A graduate of Gordon College, George is a gifted artist and a registered nurse. Hers is a life of two worlds running alongside one another and coming together. Both life paths are her sustenance.
“Art-making has always been a stabilizing force in my emotional core,” George states. “Art winds in and out of all my experiences, giving voice and image to the things I need to say. Art has given me the ability to tolerate and celebrate my individual human aloneness, and this is a great gift. Throughout my life, I have turned to painting as a way to relax, to give and receive, to grieve, to express, and to feel whole. My studio space is so familiar, transformative. My arm and eye begin to feel more like spirit, and I travel to some other place. The movements of my body, like my mind, become a dance. ”
George works as a registered nurse at the Barbara McInnis House, on Albany Street in Boston. A medical respite facility for the homeless, it is operated by the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program. “We specialize in addiction treatment. Yes, the job is hard. As a nurse, I get to know the person, and it is heartbreaking. The work has opened the world for me in a very different way than I had ever experienced.” George pauses, then shares with a quiet intensity, “There are moments of beauty, there is community, people sitting together, sharing. The vulnerability. It is good work.”
“Every day I work at McInnis, I am in contact with real human beings who have undergone suffering. The work keeps me grounded. It is humbling, and I need it.” George takes pause, “I have to do the work. It is just. These people deserve someone to care about them. In the rest of their lives they have been rejected. I feel they deserve to be cared about, and for. I believe it in my bones and that is why I devote a part of my life to my work as a nurse.”
George shares her home, undergoing a beautiful renovation, with her husband Max and son Will. Her studio is in her home. “My happiest, most alive, my most fully integrated self is when I make art, and I don’t mind if I’m ‘failing’ in the art because always it resolves. I take so much pleasure in putting the color on the board, etching the shape, whatever is happening in my mind, it is very life giving. I need it like water and food. Art takes me into this world, this place, removed from the ‘mustard’, the emails, dishes, housework.”
George has exhibited extensively as a painter. Over the past two years she has explored new materials, with a process using copper leaf and acrylics to create rich, textured paintings resulting in the Copper Abstract Series. “Through the process of layering and carving the paintings with a screwdriver and an electric sander, I incorporated copper leaf into artwork in a way I had never seen before.” She also taught herself to make handmade inks from foraged materials for The Terroir Project.
“The concept of terroir, the terroir of a person’s life; I liked the process of starting with a memory, going to the place, foraging. Then came distillation, heating, soaking and grinding.
I loved the alchemy of it all, the research. At first I was curious, and then it morphed into a very personal journey, revisiting places of great significance in my life, and making a memory into something physical, instead of it being only in my mind. All the aspects that are in each ink are created from memory, and they become
artifacts telling the story of a person’s life. In this case it’s in color, an ingredient to make the memory familiar.” With the inks, George then made drawings on Yupo paper.
“The ink is surprising; the ink on the paper, doesn’t behave like paint. I am confident with paint, but ink? It was shocking,” George laughs. “Yellow becomes red, the pH changes, I didn’t know what to expect with the ink, and this was so fun. When it dries, it is again completely unpredictable! Very different from acrylic painting.”
Reflecting on where she is right now, George states, “My husband Max and I have a beautiful partnership, he is so accepting. I am so grateful for him. He prepares a place for me when I need ten hours—he can do the mustard! I could not do what I am doing at all without him. He understands the need for deep, real space. The sense of grounding comes from this. As an artist, you need space, sometimes you need to push people away. But I am also a mother and a partner, and I am grateful for my job as an RN because it keeps me firmly rooted in reality. My art is central, and a solitary practice, but I very much need people, too.”
George’s upcoming exhibits: Regimes of Truth: Art, Power and The Making of Reality, at TAG gallery in Boston. Opening reception September 14, 2025. Rooted and Grounded, at Gallery Twist in Lexington. Opening reception September 20, 2025.