Katya Assouad Traboulsi https://www.katyaassouadtraboulsi.com/ Art, memory, and stories told in color en Sat, 31 Oct 2026 08:20:22 GMT Fifteen Airports, One Palette: Notes on How American Light Follows Me Home https://www.katyaassouadtraboulsi.com/fifteen-airports-one-palette-american-light/ https://www.katyaassouadtraboulsi.com/fifteen-airports-one-palette-american-light/ The neon of a Vegas concourse, the pewter sky over a Seattle runway, terracotta dust on a Santa Fe tarmac — fifteen airports rearranged something in how I mix color. A travel memoir about place seeping into paint. Katya Assouad Traboulsi Personal Essay Sat, 31 Oct 2026 08:01:55 GMT Booth Fees and Small Mercies: Two Years of Selling Paintings Out of a Suitcase https://www.katyaassouadtraboulsi.com/booth-fees-and-small-mercies-us-art-fairs/ https://www.katyaassouadtraboulsi.com/booth-fees-and-small-mercies-us-art-fairs/ Twenty-two fairs, two rental vans, and a spreadsheet that became my most honest critic. What the American art fair circuit actually pays — and what it quietly takes — from a working painter. Katya Assouad Traboulsi Studio Practice Sat, 31 Oct 2026 08:01:55 GMT Living Without the Loudest White: A Studio Manifesto on Titanium https://www.katyaassouadtraboulsi.com/living-without-titanium-white-studio-manifesto/ https://www.katyaassouadtraboulsi.com/living-without-titanium-white-studio-manifesto/ Titanium white is in nearly every tube of paint sold in America, and I have spent three years refusing it. This is the case for constraint — and what lead, zinc, and pure light taught me about building a palette by subtraction. Katya Assouad Traboulsi Studio Practice Sat, 31 Oct 2026 04:02:31 GMT Eight Seconds of Attention: Notes From a Month of Painting Where Strangers Walk https://www.katyaassouadtraboulsi.com/eight-seconds-of-attention-painting-in-public/ https://www.katyaassouadtraboulsi.com/eight-seconds-of-attention-painting-in-public/ For thirty days I set up an easel in Union Square and let the city become my studio. What I learned about performance, unsolicited critique, and the strange economics of painting for an audience that never stops moving. Katya Assouad Traboulsi Personal Essay Sat, 31 Oct 2026 04:02:31 GMT Grinding Toward the Unspeakable Hue: A Year at the Mortar and Pestle https://www.katyaassouadtraboulsi.com/grinding-toward-the-unspeakable-hue-pigment-experiment/ https://www.katyaassouadtraboulsi.com/grinding-toward-the-unspeakable-hue-pigment-experiment/ For twelve months I made my own paint — grinding stone, suspending powder, failing on schedule. The goal was a single color that no tube, no Pantone swatch, and no screen could reproduce. This is what the attempt taught me about where paint actually comes from. Katya Assouad Traboulsi Studio Practice Sat, 31 Oct 2026 00:02:32 GMT Two Hands, One Painting: Confessions of a Recovering Large-Canvas Painter https://www.katyaassouadtraboulsi.com/two-hands-one-painting-large-canvas-confessions/ https://www.katyaassouadtraboulsi.com/two-hands-one-painting-large-canvas-confessions/ After a decade of canvases that required a rented van and two strong friends, I started painting postcards at my kitchen table. What I lost in spectacle, I gained in honesty — and what that says about American ambition is worth sitting with. Katya Assouad Traboulsi Personal Essay Sat, 31 Oct 2026 00:02:32 GMT The Deliberate Look: Five American Museums, Five Paintings That Retrained My Eye https://www.katyaassouadtraboulsi.com/five-american-museums-deliberate-looking-painters-guide/ https://www.katyaassouadtraboulsi.com/five-american-museums-deliberate-looking-painters-guide/ Most museum visits dissolve into a pleasant blur. Here is the itinerary I give to every painter who asks: five American institutions, one specific painting in each, and the concrete lesson about color, light, or restraint that each one taught me. Katya Assouad Traboulsi Studio Practice Fri, 30 Oct 2026 20:03:09 GMT A Suitcase, Sixty Years, and Every Word She Ever Sent Me: Painting the Family Archive https://www.katyaassouadtraboulsi.com/suitcase-family-archive-painting-grandmothers-letters/ https://www.katyaassouadtraboulsi.com/suitcase-family-archive-painting-grandmothers-letters/ When my grandmother's letters finally crossed the ocean in a battered leather suitcase, I inherited sixty years of handwriting and no instructions. This is the story of how I turned fading ink into pigment, and correspondence into composition. Katya Assouad Traboulsi Personal Essay Fri, 30 Oct 2026 20:03:09 GMT The Tiles That Taught Me Color: A Memoir of Kitchen Light and Cobalt Blue https://www.katyaassouadtraboulsi.com/tiles-that-taught-me-color-memoir/ https://www.katyaassouadtraboulsi.com/tiles-that-taught-me-color-memoir/ Long before I owned a single tube of professional paint, I had a palette pressed into ceramic on my grandmother's kitchen wall. This essay traces how domestic spaces become an artist's first color theory class — and how memory, once translated honestly, can anchor a lifelong visual language. Katya Assouad Traboulsi Personal Essay Fri, 30 Oct 2026 16:02:36 GMT What the Studio Wall Knows: Five Hard-Won Rules for Knowing When a Painting Is Finished https://www.katyaassouadtraboulsi.com/what-the-studio-wall-knows-finishing-paintings/ https://www.katyaassouadtraboulsi.com/what-the-studio-wall-knows-finishing-paintings/ The hardest tool in any studio is a blank wall with good light. After two decades of propping canvases against it — some rescued, some abandoned — I've distilled five lessons about the invisible stage of finishing a painting, written for every artist who cannot stop touching wet paint. Katya Assouad Traboulsi Studio Practice Fri, 30 Oct 2026 16:02:36 GMT