Katie Jurney | Haus Jurney

I have been creating for more than three decades — alongside military service, advanced academic study, motherhood, and a career as a systems engineer at a national laboratory. Art has never existed apart from structure in my life. It has always existed within it.

My work explores what happens when discipline meets wonder.

Several years ago, I entered a period of recalibration. Skill remained, but direction required refinement. Rather than searching for inspiration externally, I returned to fundamentals. I imposed constraint. I chose a familiar subject — clouds — and reconstructed them through an ordinary form: popcorn.

The resulting Popped series became a technical reset. Each canvas increased in scale and complexity. Each composition functioned as a controlled experiment in light, atmosphere, and material fluency. Through repetition and stretch, I rediscovered not only the science of oil paint — but a renewed architectural approach to my practice.

From that point forward, my work ceased to be exploratory. It became engineered.

Today, every series is developed through structured conceptual frameworks informed by my background in systems thinking and technical projects. The geometry of rocket motor grains, the physics of motion, the mathematics of repetition, and the quiet poetry of ordinary objects all inform the visual language of HAUS JURNEY.

I am interested in tension.
Structure and softness.
Force and fragility.
Precision and play.

My paintings often begin with something familiar or meaningful to me — popcorn, an egg yolk, a wave, a tumbleweed — and elevate it through scale, composition, and discipline. The ordinary becomes monumental. The fleeting becomes archival.

I work primarily in oil to honor its depth, history, and technical rigor. Light is constructed, not implied. Movement is engineered, not accidental.

HAUS JURNEY is not built on spontaneity.
It is built on deliberate ascent.

Each closed series represents a defined chapter — finite, measured, and complete. Each open series functions as an experimental field. Together, they form a collection architecture that mirrors the systems frameworks that guide my professional life.

My practice exists where work ends and wonder begins.

— Katie Jurney