About the Artist

Kat Furtado is a contemporary, mixed-media artist from San Diego, California. She specializes in abstraction and creating ethereal, expressive art. Kat is a certified and licensed Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP) with a Master’s of Art in Communication Science and Disorders. Her background as an SLP informs and inspires her path as an artist. Storytelling, emotions, and recurrent themes of humanity are woven with care into her work. To Furtado, creating art is an act of non-verbal communication and is validation of the human experience. Being that communication is the only true link between sentient beings, Furtado considers the creation of art to be an essential communicative endeavor.

Furtado became a mother in 2015. The nuances and transformation within motherhood sparked the need for a creative outlet. This was the catalyst for her third career (SLP, motherhood, artist), wherein she realized that parenting two small children required her to do the bravest thing she could imagine: something new. She became a full-time artist in December of 2020. Furtado has sold out two twenty piece collections of small works upon release. She has collectors worldwide. Her artwork was featured in the Roaring Artist Gallery’s “Powerful Little Things II” exhibition, and she was recently interviewed by “Shoutout SoCal” to discuss her career as an artist. In October of 2021, she successfully self-released her first full product line featuring her illustrative work.

When she isn’t painting, she can be found cuddling with any combination of her two kids, her rescued cat, and/or her rescued dog. True to motherhood, there is always someone on her lap, and also true to motherhood, she doesn’t really mind.

About Artist’s Work:

The miniseries, “Onward” is a digital mixed media collage series of abstract figurative work very loosely describing specific seasons within the artist’s life. They portray a quest for authenticity and resilience. The first portrait, “Running Out,” features the untamed emotions of an adolescent and young adult searching for comfort, meaning, and a sense of connection. The wild brushstrokes and loose writing mirror the enormous danger and fear the subject feels as she moves through a time when she has little to no control over the trajectory of her life. The second portrait, “Onward,” shows a vulnerable adult female, post-partum, yearning for validation and hope she isn’t seeing in herself or others. Dejected, depressed, and isolated, she seeks to find answers within herself but falls short. Still, the act of her conscious vulnerability is enough to carry her through to whatever comes next. By the third portrait, “Resilient Spirit,” our subject has discovered a sense of peace and resolution. She works tirelessly to provide a safe space for her children. She has fostered opportunities for them to have a sense of independence and autonomy, allowing them to be whoever they need to be to feel safe. They know they are loved. They are validated. They are comforted. They are home. The subtle confidence her children have in her gives her the chance to see herself through a different lens. She moves onward into the next season of her life, working to be the best possible version of herself for them.

What does “Home” mean to you: 

Home is a sense of community, connection, and belonging. It’s the ultimate feeling that one has found the place, physical or metaphorical, that makes them feel whole.

It’s the sense of safety that allows a person to know they are enough: good enough, cared for enough, and strong enough. Home is the vehicle through which someone who loves deeply can be loved back just as they are.

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