KATRINA COBB
- ARTISTIC HUB MAGAZINE
- Jun 23
- 5 min read
Updated: Jun 25
Stillness in Color
Katrina Cobb is an artist whose work emerges from stillness. In her paintings, there’s a rhythm that doesn’t impose itself. It unfolds gradually, through color, memory, and the space between gestures. She spent years without a fixed address, moving through cities, languages, and changing light. That experience left a mark on her work. Not through literal imagery, but through atmosphere. In this interview, she reflects on where it all began, on color as a language, and on a creative process in which emotions don’t search for form. They find it naturally, when the moment is right.
Where did your story with art truly begin? Was there a moment when creating stopped being practical and became something deeply personal? What made you trade measured lines for instinct and feeling?
There wasn’t a single moment. It was more like a quiet remembering. Art has been threaded through my life since childhood, but for years I channeled my creativity into more structured realms: architecture, coaching, strategic design. It wasn’t until I gave myself permission to paint intuitively, without a plan or expected outcome, that something shifted. I could tell you the day it solidified for me, with a small, expressive painting on my kitchen table, unlike anything I’d ever allowed myself to create before. That was when painting became deeply personal. The measured lines dissolved into rhythm and feeling. It became my language for emotion, memory, and the things I couldn’t articulate any other way.
What did living without a fixed address teach you? Years on the road, different skies, new languages. How did that shape the way you see, feel, create? Is there a place that still lives in your work?
Years on the road taught me that “home” is less a location and more a sensory imprint. A quality of light, a shift in the air, the texture of stillness in a place. Living untethered helped me see the world as layered and emotionally charged. It shaped the way I experience color, rhythm, and space in my paintings. There are echoes of Guatemala, Mexico, and Italy in my work, not always visually but energetically. The feeling of watching a volcano erupt at dusk or hearing street music rise through warm night air still lives in the brushstrokes.
What stirs you to start a painting? Do you follow an image, a mood, a color, or does something quiet rise to the surface and ask to be seen?
Often it’s not a specific image. It’s a mood, a vibration, or a moment that leaves a trace. Sometimes it’s a song stuck in my head, other times a color I can’t stop thinking about, or a moment in time that suddenly pops to the forefront of my mind. The best paintings begin when something quiet rises to the surface and asks to be seen. Not demanded, but revealed through movement, layer by layer.
How do you use color when words fall short? Do you trust it to speak for you, or do you guide it with intent? What draws you to the layered, textured surfaces that define so much of your work?
Color is my most fluent language. I trust it more than logic. Sometimes I use it to anchor an emotion, other times to stir one. The textured surfaces of my work allow color to behave unpredictably. Sinking, catching light, shifting over time. That layered texture mirrors the way we hold memories and feelings, not in straight lines, but in impressions, overlaps, and echoes.
Where do you find stillness in the act of creating? Your paintings feel unhurried, open, like a breath held in calm. Is that something you seek or something that simply arrives as you work?
The stillness arrives slowly, after I surrender control. There’s a breath that happens when I stop trying to make something and start letting the painting lead. The rhythm of the knife, the mixing of color, the space between gestures. It becomes meditative. I seek to create that same stillness in the final piece, so the viewer feels it too. An invitation to pause, soften, and reflect.
How much of yourself do you allow into the canvas? Are your paintings a reflection of what’s inside, or do they sometimes show you something you didn’t expect to find?
All of me, though not always consciously. The paintings begin as extensions of what I feel or remember, but they often reveal something I didn’t know I was carrying. It’s as much a process of self-discovery as it is expression. I paint to understand myself better, and in doing so, I hope others see themselves more clearly too.
What happens when someone connects with your work? Do you think about the person who will stand in front of the piece, or is that moment entirely theirs?
That’s the moment I paint for.
When a viewer stands before a piece and says, “I feel like this was made for me,” I know I’ve done my job.
I don’t paint with a specific viewer in mind, but I do trust that the right people will find the right work. When they do, it becomes theirs. It becomes part of their environment, their emotional rhythm, even their healing. It becomes part of their journey, the next chapter in their story.
Is there something you haven’t painted yet? A feeling you haven’t faced, a memory you’ve kept at a distance, an image that still needs time?
There are always emotions I’ve only just begun to understand. Grief that hasn’t yet found form. Joy I haven’t dared to fully express. Some ideas need to live inside me a little longer before they’re ready to be shared. I honor that timing. The canvas will know when it’s time.
In Katrina’s paintings, you can feel the passage of time, but not the kind measured in days or deadlines. It’s more like a space where something is allowed to ripen without haste. The surfaces she shapes are not static, yet they don’t tell stories in a literal sense. They carry a presence that doesn’t ask to be interpreted. Her paintings don’t demand attention. They quietly invite it. They don’t offer solutions, but they create a space where something can settle.
Sometimes it’s a thought, sometimes a feeling, and sometimes just the need to pause. Katrina’s work doesn’t try to direct the experience. It allows the experience to unfold. In that simple act of trust lies the strength of her painting. What isn’t said aloud but stays with us. Without needing to be explained.
To explore more of Katrina’s work or get in touch directly, visit her studio online and discover the places where her colors begin.
