COLOR, color and more color exploding like a summer sunset across her canvases.  It's the bright, vivid color that excites Kathy Reuter's artistic juices.  Add sunlight to the color and Voila!, Kathy will paint it.  Her oils and portable easel accompany her everywhere she goes and the result is Impressionistic scenes of flowering fields, old buildings and the lavender fields near her home on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State.
	Growing up on a farm in rural Virginia and speaking only the native language of her immigrant parents upon entering grade school, Kathy felt isolated as a child and was drawn to the beauty of the natural world around her.  From the beginning, her drawings were inspired by her love of color.
	From the pastoral isolation of her childhood, she turned 180° and moved to the city to study art, then pursued a career as a graphic designer living and working in downtown Washington, DC.  Washington, a city of green with flowering cherry trees and huge parks, stimulated her creative need for painting.  Her direct view from her office to the White House and the park in front of it were the inspiration for a published watercolor work.
	After retiring from her day job, Kathy moved to the other Washington in the Pacific Northwest, with its breathtaking vistas of sea and mountains, towering firs and cedars, brilliant blue skies and variegated fields of fruit trees and flowers.  After some experimentation, she found that the rich textures and colors of oil painting enabled her to express these exciting new vistas and thus her preference in style and media was established.
	Upon discovering the area's lavender fields, she began to paint set up her easel and paint there regularly, rendering the visual beauty of her surroundings as the glorious perfume of the sunstruck plants drifted around her.
	Kathy now lives on a hill overlooking the scenic Strait of Juan de Fuca.  She has recently developed her hobby into a livelihood by marketing reproductions of her oil paintings on greeting cards, art magnets and prints which are sold in gift shops and elsewhere throughout the United States.
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