UCS Artist Sponsorship - Texas/California Painter, Kat Marais

Upper Canada Stretchers has taken on an initiative that allows us to give back to our valuable clients and, at the same time, allow them to become more familiar with our company. Many people may not know but Upper Canada Stretchers is located in a stunningly beautiful part of the world on the shores of Georgian Bay in Southern Ontario. We are proud of our local area and are happy to show it to our clients. To this end, we have sponsored a client to come work/paint with us for two weeks.

The artist we currently have visiting is Kat Marais. Kat is a painter from Austin, Texas, who studied art in Los Angeles, California. Using a combination of acrylics and oil paint, she takes inspiration from planets, flowers, and the human body to create beautiful “science fiction”-like images that seem to depict other worlds and natural processes on both a macro and micro level. She is painting in the former Karen’s Scrapbook Studio in downtown Wiarton until October 1st and has been really enjoying meeting local artists who have stopped by to say hello. “It’s a really cool community here”, she says. Her current painting incorporates the colors of the local Lake Huron sunset, inspiration taken from “the colors here and the way that the [lake] turns champagne-y peach on the edge and then ripples towards you.” Of the local geography, she says, “It reminds me of California, to be honest; the way the coast looks and the wildflowers and the rocks. It’s really beautiful and I’m really grateful to be here.”

Kat has been using Professional stretcher bars from Upper Canada Stretchers for many years and she likes their modular qualities because they can be taken apart to accommodate her frequent moves. Other brands have failed to consistently produce square corners when reassembling so she prefers the fact that UCS stretchers and cross braces are solid and keyable, producing a perfect stretch on her canvases, time after time. “These are solid and modular – very great product!