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July 23 – October 31, 2024 (Falmouth, Massachusetts): Highfield Hall & Gardens is pleased to announce the exhibition Kat O’Connor: Swimming the Jewel, scheduled to open July 23, 2024. In this solo exhibition, artist Kat O’Connor brings her poetic and sublime paintings of water and human connection to water to Highfield Hall. In Swimming the Jewel, O’Connor paints the subject that has been her muse for over a decade. O’Connor captures water and light and sometimes the movement of figures in water to create a seemingly new world of the senses. O’Connor works in watercolor, acrylic, and oil, with subject matter reflecting what is important in her life, travel, horses, and swimming. Her portfolio contains grid-like and nature-based abstraction, horse studies, bodies of water, city and landscapes capturing her focus on light and pattern. O’Connor’s work has been included in numerous solo and group exhibitions across the United States. She is a Copley Master with the Copley Society of Artists and was honored with a Co/So Fellowship and Residency at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown Massachusetts in 2023 and was a 2021 Sam and Adele Golden Foundation for the Arts Resident. She was awarded a Mass Cultural Council Fellowship for her drawings and two ArtsWorcester Material Needs Grants. After winning the Sally R. Bishop Best in Show Prize at the 2021 ArtsWorcester Biennial, she displayed a solo exhibition, Fathom: The Art of Kat O’Connor, at the Worcester Art Museum. She has also led painting classes in Texas, New Mexico, Italy, Greece, and throughout New England. In describing her creative approach, O’Connor says she seeks to explore the way realism can push into and through abstraction. “My paintings capture what happens in a split second of weightlessness, a momentary realism in which rip currents tear away at the abyss and produce images and shapes that were once imperceptible.” This is evident when the artist incorporates ethereal celestial light and weightlessness into portraits. Kat O’Connor is a full-time artist and art instructor living outside of Boston, Massachusetts, and her work can be viewed at katopaints.com and @katopaints. Gallery Hours: Tuesday– Friday, 10:00 am – 4:00 pm Saturday & Sunday 10:00 am – 2:00 pm About Highfield Hall & Gardens The house is a rare surviving example of transitional Stick Style architecture, containing beautiful gardens located in the heart of Falmouth, Massachusetts. It is a unique combination of a historic house, expansive gardens and trails, and a vibrant cultural center. Built in 1878 as the summer home for Boston's Beebe family, the house sits on 5.5 pristine acres surrounded by nearly 400 acres of conservation land and public walking trails. Highfield Hall & Gardens is not your typical historic estate. It is an example of a historic building saved by grassroots community organizing. An effort of tenacity and vision that continues as new research on the structure and its story of the people who lived here add to the building's significance. It offers world-class music, international art exhibitions, culinary classes, family programs, and year-round special events. For more information, visit www.highfieldhallandgardens.org.