Cathy Kramer, Artist

Cathy Kramer grew up in Candia, New Hampshire. She was the only girl in a family with three brothers.

She has been an artist since she was a child. Her earliest pencil drawings of her horse Bill were done when she was twelve and thirteen years old. Throughout her life Cathy worked with pencil, charcoal, chalk, and paint.

Like Cathy, her mother Barbara Howell painted on canvas. She also made dolls out of fabric and painted ceramic figures. There is a page on this website displaying some of Barbara's art. Her father, Kenneth Howell, was a union carpenter. Cathy's parents were often referred to as Barbie and Ken.

Cathy studied art at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island. She later moved to Ithaca, New York, where she met her husband Greg Kramer in the mid-1970s. Greg and Cathy had two children, Christine and Justin.

For several years Cathy sold her paintings at the Ithaca Farmers Market under the name Portraits by Cathy. The sign had an actual face cast of her face. She did live portraits of people in charcoal and pastel, and she was also hired to draw family portraits and portraits of pets. Cathy volunteered to teach art at Longview, a nursing home, and at Challenge, a facility for adults with developmental disabilities. She had several art shows at wineries in the area and had paintings of local waterfalls hung for years in Falls Restaurant in Trumansburg, New York.

Her daughter Christine said, "If it was up to my mom she'd be home reading or painting and hanging out with a kitty."

Cathy was very influenced by a friend of hers named Sandi who helped to expand Cathy's skills and experiences. Sandi was a fellow artist who took Cathy to classes with Tom Buechner. They went to museums and botanical gardens together to do live paintings.

Sandi also drove Cathy to New Hampshire to see Cathy's brothers and to Boston to visit museums and the ocean.

Many of Cathy's paintings are portraits painted in the classes of Thomas Buechner, who worked at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum. He was also a founding director of the Corning Museum of Glass. Cathy's paintings are reminiscent of Thomas Buechner's style.

Cathy was also commissioned to draw animals for the covers of brochures for the Diagnostic Laboratory at the Veterinary School at Cornell University, where her husband Greg worked.

Many of Cathy's paintings are not signed or dated. Her daughter explained that when Cathy's husband pushed her to sign her art, she would say, "I haven't finished it yet," even when she had not worked on the piece for twenty years.

Biography by Chip Kramer