Kati Henning (b. 1983) grew up in the rural areas of Union County, Ohio. She received her BFA from Ohio Wesleyan University in 2006, with a focus in painting.
Henning’s paintings create the alternate realities she dreamed of in childhood. Her imagined interiors are ornate dreamscapes, a response to her impoverished upbringing in a conservative and intensely religious household: a forceful rebuttal to memories of home as a drab, brown shell deplete of comfort, beauty and color.
Henning’s lineage of skilled tradesmen prioritized building a life with their hands, surviving by working the land alongside the nearby Amish and Mennonite communities, living a parallel and meager existence. Henning sublimates her formative experiences into paintings packed with architectural details, fanciful trompe l’oeil, and sumptuous furnishings, showing viewers “the way I wish it could have been instead of the way it actually was.”
