About Kathleen...

Kathleen Werner has immersed herself in many different aspects of the artistic realm. Her career began at 20 years old when she designed and opened a boutique in Scottsdale, Arizona, which she called “Zen.”

Kathleen at Taliesin West

Kathleen at Taliesin West

Featuring Asian art, Zen sold meditation pieces and teas from all over the world. From customers' interest in the store's decor and art, she went on to designing living spaces and continued on to integrate landscape and commercial design.

At the age of 25 she also designed and owned a gallery for large scale modern art in Arizona featuring creative local talent. Werner's interests eventually turned to a more architectural aesthetic. She completed a program at the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture at Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona. While there, she became interested in and inspired by the idea of creating interactive art, large pieces that could be both beautiful and useful.

Concepts that could be an enhancement of landscaping or living areas while embracing true function. Her initial project design Etazin, an interactive outdoor lounge chair and sculpture piece, is now a permanent installation at Taliesin West.

The more recent Etazin Square incarnation has been added to the art collection at the Hyatt Regency Scottsdale Resort and Spa in Gainey Village.

The inspiration for the Etazin chair I designed, a huge almost gyroscopic circular chair, came from a night I was sitting in Frank Lloyd Wright’s private garden.

Etazin is also currently featured as public art in Manhattan at 48th and 3rd where people sit and take photos all day long. Werner and her designs have been featured in numerous publications, websites and design magazines and are selling all over the world. She is now residing in New York City focused on completing her Ecliptic series of paintings.

Kathleen at work

Kathleen in New York

The Ecliptic Paintings Commentary

In her new Ecliptic painting series, Kathleen Werner designs centered geometries and creates portals with the use of multiple varied symmetries.

The Ecliptic series is filled with symbolic undercurrents and combines quadrilateral, reflective, diagonal and cyclical symmetries to realize a unique visual interaction. The technique produces distinctive paintings that take on an interesting assembly of organic and mechanical movement.

Inspired through a background and obsession with architectural design, these intricate and elegant paintings are drafted on spinning rails and detailed completely freehand with compositions that require intense reflection at every step of the process.

My work won’t feel right to me if it doesn’t have a strong statement or presence to it, sometimes in its simplicity and other times in the ordered chaos we find so often in nature.

Working out of her studio in New York, Werner is keenly dedicated to the perfection and continuation of her techniques and helping to cultivate a deeper appreciation for the natural beauty in the world.

Kathleen Werner is a member of the National Arts Club in Manhattan, and on the board of directors of the Taliesin Fellows, Frank Lloyd Wright‘s School of Architecture Alumni Organization.

Email Kathleen Werner for more information.