Alex Katz, Visiting Artist Lecture 1971

Alex Katz gives a lecture at Skowhegan where he shows a series of slides depicting his work from the 1950s and 1960s. Katz talks about his painting practice spanning portraiture, still life, and landscape. He also talks about his collage works, and how collage has helped him with his exploration of colour through form, volume and working with scale. Katz tells the participants of the importance drawing has had on his practice, and how drawing has helped him execute his paintings through creating a body of preliminary sketches as an entry point to construct his paintings. Katz further explains to the participants that the importance of scale in his work has allowed him to stretch his images in a large-scale way. Katz ends his lecture by stating that he continues to think of colour in terms of light, and how to apply this light correctly in his painting.