Kate Abercrombie creates gouache-on-board paintings that incorporate a wide array of images scavenged from mediated visual culture, as well as depictions of objects she lives with, subverting our expectations regarding medium, style, period, and technique. Abercrombie has long explored the convergence of popular culture and the self, interweaving personal and family narratives with contemporary and historical imagery. Her work references Cubism, Futurism, and American Precisionism, as well as earlier historical predecessors such as 19th century trompe l’oeil artists John Peto and William Harnett.
Abercrombie has an MFA from University of Texas at Austin and a BFA from Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia. She has been included in exhibitions in Philadelphia at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Vox Populi, Fleisher/Ollman, Little Berlin, and Black Floor. She has also shown at the Creative Research Laboratory, Austin, TX. In 2005, she received an Independence Foundation Fellowship in the Arts. In 2009, she was awarded a residency at the Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT. Her work is in the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and the Fabric Workshop and Museum.