Katja Oxman

* consigned work

Katja Oxman was born in Munich, Germany, in 1942. She came to the United States at the age of nine and studied printmaking and painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from 1962 - 1965. She studied at the Academy of Munich, Germany, in 1966 where she continued to execute large-scale woodcuts. Oxman served as Visiting Critic at the Pennsylvania Academy of fine Art; Adjunct Professor of Art at The American University in Washington, D.C.; Visiting Lecturer in Fine Art at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts; Director of the Ben Shahn Graphic Workshop at the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, Skowhegan, Maine; and Artist-in-Residence, Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.

Author John Arthur observed, "Katja Oxman's still lifes allude to a tranquil, interior world. Their unidentifiable space serves as miniature rooms where seemingly nothing occurs beyond their perimeters." Oxman creates richly textured color etchings in her precise style. Her multi-plate aquatint etchings present complex still lifes of richly patterned Oriental rugs upon which rest an overwhelming array of shadow-less objects. The artist selects from a collection of items that includes opened letters and envelopes; picture postcards from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, and other museums; birds, feathers and nests; potted plants (usually in full bloom and grown by the artist herself); oriental boxes; ripe fruits and vegetables. The objects in Oxman's still lifes appear to levitate as a result of the artist's tilted, nearly bird's eye, perspective. The viewpoint alludes to Japanese woodblock prints. A sense of stability and calm emanates from her minutely detailed printed surfaces and their warm, earthy, subtle range of tones. The thought-provoking titles of her prints are often quotations from poets Rainer Maria Rilke and Emily Dickinson and are often allusions to the images' personal meanings.

In 1967 Oxman was awarded a prestigious Certificate in Printmaking from the Royal College of Art, London, England, where she specialized in etching. The artist has been honored with dozens of grants and awards, including three prizes from 1996 - 2000 from the National Academy of Design in New York. A grant funded, in part, a full color catalogue of etchings from the past two decades: Katja Oxman: Aquatints, Maryland State Arts Council, MIMESIS Publishing, [2000], with essays by John Arthur and Robert Kimbrall.

Oxman's etchings are in permanent United States collections at the National Museum of Women in the Arts; the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art; the National Academy of Design; the Philadelphia Museum; the New Jersey State Museum; the Smithsonian Institution; the U.S. Department of State; the University of Delaware; the University of Maryland; the American University; and Baltimore's Johns Hopkins Hospital. Dozens of corporate and private collectors in the United States and abroad also exhibit Oxman's chromatically lush prints.