I’m Katia Reitman, and I’m a visual artist and illustrator. My practice explores reality and imagination through painting, drawing, printmaking, artist’s books, and illustrations. I investigate the unreliability of collective and individual memory by creating dreamlike images that contain only fragments of lived experience. The legacy of European Romanticism runs through my practice—all-consuming emotions, healing through nature, solitude, and strangeness are recurring themes.
My process often begins intuitively—a single color becomes the foundation upon which forms gradually emerge. I aim to capture movement within stillness, drawing inspiration from Early Renaissance, Symbolism, natural processes, and cinema.
I share Romantics’ preoccupation with the sublime and the metaphysical. In my series “Ice-Bound Memories,” cold princesses lie preserved in glass cases—metaphors for emotions buried within and admiration of experiences left behind. This connects to my fascination with female figures in film and art history, from Rita Hayworth to characters like Pannochka in Soviet folk horror Viy (1967). Curving lines and floating forms emphasize the transitory nature of memory and desire.
My works are poetic expressions of my internal landscape, where anxieties transform into vivid, sometimes disturbing visual narratives. I invite viewers to experience these emotional territories where feelings develop and continue to live beyond the moment of their creation.