About Sonoma County Artist Kathleen Truax
When I begin to paint, I feel the process more than I consciously think about it. Thinking comes into the later stages. I paint with a palette knife because it allows me to paint more quickly than with a brush, to slide and mush colors together, to draw with the tip of the knife and to create flat planes and geometry.
When I was a child our family moved more than 20 times before I went to college. Often we lived near open spaces, woods and streams. I felt a stronger connection to some places than to others. My paternal grandparents were among the last Americans to homestead. They lived on 40 acres on the Eel River in Mendocino County. Although I only spent a whole summer there once as a child, the smells of the bay, madrone and buckeye, and the burnt colors of summer, the tastes of home grown vegetables, fruit, 
cream and butter and the wonderful river itself, left strong impressions on all of my senses. I think that is why when as an adult I finally landed in Northern California, it was clear to me that this was home. Although I had painted with watercolor since childhood, when I moved to Northern California about 20 years ago, I began to paint landscape in oil. In recent years I have also painted landscapes of Costa Rica, Spain and Hawaii.
While raising three daughters I studied design, life drawing and portraiture at the Cooper School of Art and the Cleveland Institute of Art in Ohio. I also studied abstract acrylic painting with William Grauer, whose collectors include the Cleveland Museum of Art. After moving to Marin in the late 1970's I studied with Ann O'Hanlon at the Sight and Insight Gallery in Mill Valley and began to show my work in a variety of local settings. From 1996 through 2000 I participated in Marin Open Studios and at the Art Festival at the Lagoon. I am also a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and have worked for more than 20 years at Family Service Agency of Marin, as well as in private practice.
Please check back soon as this website is always evolving to showcase my new work. If you are interested in purchasing an original work of art or giclee print you may call me at (707) 996-1919, or send an email to me at this address: krtruax@att.net.