"For me, art is like breathing. It is a necessity. Some people enjoy art for its inherent statement. I truly enjoy the process of creating that statement." It is this love for the process of creation that drives Katherine Blackwell to paint.

She spent the majority of her childhood and teenage years in Vermont. It was there, with her family's encouragement, she discovered her love for art, there she investigated the extensive variety of expressive mediums that the world of art has to offer.

After moving to North Carolina at the age of 15, she began to focus on oils. Without formal education, she developed her skills by doing studies of a variety of landscapes. A concentration in portraiture soon followed. She found portraits to be more exciting and challenging, as well as more rewarding once a true likeness was achieved. A consistent and determined focus on faces and the human form laid the seeds for the evolution of her art.

"Melty People" is a concentration spawned from years and years of youthful sketches contorting and manipulating the human body. Her experience in portraiture allowed her to understand the techniques necessary to create a likeness of the human form. She then translated these techniques to create more detailed, sculptural subjects in oils. The goal, she states, is "to make them as realistic as possible, in spite of their impossible circumstances."

The "Melty People" are an interpretation of the world in which we live. They are a visualization of the emotional and non-physical connection we have to each other – one of struggling, one of bonding, one of which we are seldom aware.