KATHY LIAO: We MetInADream
Dream
by Sherry Leedy Contemporary
April 4 - May 24, 2025
presented
Art
Kathy Liao: We Met In A Dream
Kathy Liao is known for her large figurative works that translate her lived experience and history into colorful, luminous, multi-layered compositions, that often portray herself and family. During the isolation of the pandemic, Liao’s paintings revealed the loneliness and distance of that experience and made it tangible.
In Liao’s newest work, We Met in a Dream, the intimacy of story is mirrored by the intimacy of scale. Liao uses the immediacy of working in a small size to summon stories from her memories, or the trance of a dream, to the poetry of painting and collage. These explorations are full of movement, leaving clues and pointing the way.
“I woke up one day from a dream where my little sister turned into a fly. I reached and grasped for her, to protect her, to keep her safe. I felt deep panic, guilt, and dread. In the moments before waking, I cupped three dead flies and I couldn’t tell which one was her.
I started a dream journaling practice a year ago. Each drawing is a strange affirmation and quiet unraveling of the human drama in my mind. My work exists in the fluid state between experience, memory, dream, and place. In an attempt to translate the fleeting and subconscious, at the intersection of history and time, the drawings shapeshift and settle into allegories of their own.”
-Kathy Liao
Biography
As a Taiwanese American artist, Kathy Liao looks for patterns and repetitions that weave through the immigrant families’ experience in her mixed-media work. She is the recipient of various recognitions, including the 2023 Joan Mitchell Foundation Fellowship, 2022 21c KC Artadia Award, 2020 Charlotte Street Foundation Visual Artist Award, and a public art commission for the new Kansas City International Airport. Her work was shown in galleries and museums in Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, Kansas City, and many other cities nationally and internationally. As a mentor and educator, Liao lectured and presented at multiple institutions and conferences nationwide. Formerly, Liao was Director of the Painting and Printmaking department at Missouri Western State University. She was nominated “Most Influential Professor” in 2019. She is currently the organizational services program officer at Mid-America Arts Alliance.
Photo credit: Jim Barcus 2022
TOP ROW: Familiar Alley , gouache on paper ; Interoception: Breath, collage and marker
BOTTOM ROW: Green Eyeballs, collage, marker, and gouache on paper; Rays, collage, All pieces 11” x 14”
marker on paper; I Lost It, collage, marker, and gouache on paper collage, marker, and gouache on paper; Four Bites, collage and gouache on paper
Balcony Oil on canvas
48” x 38”
Yellow Blanket (Mother) Collage and gouache on paper 14” x 13”
TOP ROW: Fault , collage, marker, and gouache on paper ; For the Possibility of Release, gouache and marker on paper; What We Buried, collage, marker, and gouache on paper
BOTTOM ROW: Interoception: Vastness, collage and marker on paper; Window Seat, collage I Forgot, collage, marker, and gouache on paper; Interoception: Syzygy, collage, marker, and
pieces 14” x 11”
gouache on paper; Tools Other than a Shovel, marker and gouache on paper, Stuck, collage
collage and gouache on paper; Interoception: Torso, collage, marker, and gouache on paper, and gouache on paper
Polka Dot Couch
Gouache, collage, and colored pencil on paper
10” x 7.25”
Night Lamp
Gouache and collage on paper
9” x 8.25”
TOP ROW: Grasping Flies, collage, marker, and gouache on paper; What the Body Felt Like, collage,
BOTTOM ROW: Hard Boiled Eggs, collage and marker on paper; A Safe Place to Collect
All pieces 11” x 14”
collage, marker and gouache on paper; Half-Dressed, collage, marker, and gouache on paper
Non-Sequiturs, collage and marker on paper; Protectors, marker and gouache on paper
Role Model #2
Mixed media on canvas
41” x 36”
Convalescence 2
Collage and gouache on paper
8.5” x 24”
After the Squall Oil and mixed media on canvas
40” x 52”
TOP ROW: What’s Left of Grief , collage, marker, and gouache on paper ; Explorer, collage,
BOTTOM ROW: Waipuo, collage, marker, and gouache on paper; Bus Route #2, collage
All pieces 11” x 14”
collage, marker, and gouache on paper; Timeless Drift, collage and marker on paper
collage and marker on paper; Parts Theatre, collage and marker on paper
Proximity
4-plate aluminum lithography on Stonehenge Kraft paper
16” x 13.5”
Absent Presence
Oil on linen over board
24” x 24”
Korean Drama Lullaby
Collage, marker, colored pencil, and gouache on paper
30” x 34”
TOP ROW: Dissolution , collage and marker on paper ; Feeling of Discordancy, collage
BOTTOM ROW: Misty Onramp, collage and marker on paper; Interoception: Under, collage
All pieces 11” x 14”
collage and marker on paper; Inevitable Tsunami, collage, marker, and gouache on paper
collage and marker on paper; Crawl, collage, marker, and gouache on paper
Hide and Seek with the Tiger Child Mixed media on paper
42” x 32”
