Kathleen McHugh expresses her creativity as both art, and sometimes as anti-art. Kathleen grew up on stories—lots of stories. Her grandparents, who came from Ireland and Lithuania, relied on storytelling to give their children a sense of identity and belonging in a new and unfamiliar country. Their children, her parents, passed those stories on to her: tales of people she had never met and places she had never been. Some were funny, some tragic, and when no story fit the moment, her parents simply reached for a fairy tale. Over time, these narratives blended into a kind of magical realism that continues to animate her imagination. She was born into a creative family. Her Lithuanian grandfather played in an orchestra, and her mother attended the Chicago Art Institute, supporting herself as a commercial artist. Her father’s large Irish family was filled with unforgettable characters—each an unorthodox problem solver in their own way. Creativity and experimentation were simply part of the household ethos. At three years old, she famously climbed onto the kitchen counter to make her father a popsicle, mixing every syrup and spice she could find into cold coffee water. When she proudly presented it to him after work, her mother simply said, “She gave it to you,” and he took a bite. That spirit of permission, combined with her mother’s guidance and her own irresistible attraction to materials and making, convinced her that she has always been an artist. When she copied drawings from magazines as a child, her mother would gently redirect her: “If you want to learn how to draw the human form, use a plaster cast; don’t look at a flat page from a magazine.” Born in Seattle, Washington, she moved with her family to Olympia in the first grade, eventually returning to Seattle for college. There, she studied literature and art, earning a BFA from the Cornish Institute of the Arts. Her artistic inspiration arises in response to ideas, moods, emotions, places, and people. Sometimes this takes the form of painting; other times, mosaic. At times her creative impulse manifests as art, and at other times as anti‑art. Sometimes it hides from her, and sometimes it announces itself boldly. She often develops concepts in suites of work, though occasionally a single piece says everything she needs to say. She has exhibited her work internationally in galleries, museums, and artist collectives since her inclusion in the 1987 Washington State Juried Exhibition, *Painting and Sculpture ’87*, at the Tacoma Art Museum, curated by Howard Fox, former Curator of Contemporary Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. She has also taught art to all ages, facilitated community murals and mosaics, and collaborated with numerous agencies and nonprofits, including Dale Chihuly’s Seniors Making Art. "I am an artist who is captivated by ideas and materials. My mother was an oil painter. My first memories are of coming into a room filled with the scents of turpentine and warm oils and seeing my mother mix substances like an alchemist before applying them to a linen canvas. The visceral love of materials has always been part of my artistic practice, even while attending art school during an era when “being seduced by materials” was a grave sin. The academic emphasis on motive and concept combined with technique and studio work has given me the foundation to develop a mature artistic practice that relates to the concerns and ideas of the times in which I live. I use painting, drawing, printmaking, mosaic, conceptual and social practice to create, explore, connect and communicate." -- Kathleen McHugh Her work is held in private collections as well as Archivo Vortice Argentina; the Gina Lotta Post Artistamp Museum in Jupiter, Florida; and the International Museum of Collage, Assemblage, and Construction (IMCAC) in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her contributions to *A Book About Death*, curated by Matthew Rose, are part of the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art Research Library; MUBE: Museu Brasileiro da Escultura in São Paulo, Brazil; and the Museum of Modern Art, Wales. *ABAD: The Last Waltz* is included in the permanent collections of the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.; the Alternative Traditions in Contemporary Arts Archive at the University of Iowa; The Book Art Museum in Łódź, Poland; The Waskomium in Burlington, Vermont; and The Islip Art Museum. Kathleen's work was featured in the Film 100 Artists !00 Dreams in Kingston, New York in 2011: Barlow Gallery is proud to feature the artwork of Kathleen McHugh.