ABOUT The Artist
Kate Huser Santucci lives and works in Dayton, Ohio. She graduated from Wright State University in 1994 with a BFA in visual art with a concentration in sculpture. She recently completed a residency at Chateau D’Orquevaux in France, and was a 2025 recipient of a Montgomery County Arts and Cultural District and Culture Works Artist Opportunity Grant.
Her work has most recently been shown at the Springfield Museum of Art, The Dayton Metro Library, and the Dayton Society of Artists in Dayton Ohio. Public work includes a mural in downtown Dayton on E. 3rd St., several pieces at the Five Rivers Health Center in Dayton, and a series of 3 pieces for the new Southeast Branch of the Dayton Metro Library. Her works are part of private collections in Ohio, New York, California, Michigan, Kentucky, Florida, and Orquevaux, France. She has an upcoming solo show at Diad Gallery in Dayton in October 2024.
Kate started her career as a sculptor and is now primarily working in encaustic and mixed media. The paintings combine beeswax, damar resin, and pigment to create luminous surfaces with many layers. She is fascinated by the natural world and finds those themes recurring in her work as she explores our connection to that world and our personal evolution within it. Her process combines both abstract mark making and figurative realism to help convey her thoughts on how we interpret meaning and context in our struggle to understand one another, our world, and our role in it. It involves using multiple layers and textures, inviting the viewer to look deeper into the piece and glimpse imagery floating beneath the surface of the wax.
Her most recent pieces are a continuation of the work she began at her residency in France. They are primarily on canvas and paper, and use acrylic, oil, cold wax, and other media to build layers and textures.