Katherine Liontas-Warren Celebrates 42 Years Creating Art In Southwest Oklahoma

Earlier this month, I invited three of my friends to attend the opening reception of Katherine Liontas-Warren's new exhibition at the Leslie Powell Foundation Gallery in downtown Lawton. I've known Katherine for nearly 10 years now and have just recently participated in her local watercolor classes. I assumed everyone in Lawton knew about her and her artwork, however, my friends, who are artists and crafters themselves, were unfamiliar.

When we arrived at the gallery for the opening reception, my friends were surprised at the amount of people visiting the gallery; they didn't even know about the gallery itself until I asked them to attend with me. And once we entered, they were all shock and awe at the beauty of the gallery and they were immediately infatuated by Katherine's artwork.

Her exhibition opened on Saturday, Sept. 12, and is titled "My Journey as an Artist." It's a retrospective celebrating her 42 years as an artist in southwest Oklahoma.

Southwest Oklahoma Artist Katherine Liontas-Warren

Katherine is originally from the East Coast, but has lived a majority of her adult life in southwest Oklahoma. She moved to Oklahoma in 1984 to teach at Cameron University. Before retiring in 2021, Katherine spent 37 years teaching printmaking, drawing and watercolor.

Katherine was teaching at Cameron while I attended school at the university from 2011 to 2015. However, I wasn't fortunate enough to take a class with her. I actually didn't meet Katherine until after I graduated and was covering arts and styles for The Lawton Constitution. I interviewed Katherine many times in her eclectic office of tchotchkes at the Cameron Art Department, and every time I would kick myself, "why didn't you take a class with her?"

In the spring of this year, I finally got my opportunity to take a watercolor class taught by Katherine through the Art Workshops at Lawton's old Carnegie Library, hosted by the City of Lawton's Arts and Humanities Division. And a class with Katherine was positively more than I had expected with her. In her classes, she teaches you artistic processes and techniques, but her style isn't ridged or lateral. She gives you the tools and then leads you to invoke yourself into the process.

While walking through the gallery, I talked to my friends about my watercolor class with Katherine as we admired her watercolors of the Atlantic Ocean and Lake Elmer Thomas. Together, we all delighted in her use of purple in a sunset watercolor and we were giddy at her use of glittered watercolors in waves crashing into rocks.

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Katherine Liontas-Warren At Leslie Powell Foundation Gallery

After viewing the retrospective, my friends and I waited to speak with Katherine to commend her on the exhibition. My friends asked me to let them know when her next class would be, as seeing her work made them more eager to learn from and create with her.

And as luck would have it, once we were able to sing Katherine's praises to her, she immediately invited us all to a watercolor class she was hosting the next weekend in the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge. I had taken her wildflower watercolor class at the refuge in May of this year, and it was a unique opportunity getting to witness an artist like Katherine move within the area her work is most influenced by.

And her life in southwest Oklahoma is exactly why she wanted to put together the retrospective. She didn't just want to celebrate her art; she really wanted to say "thank you" to the place she has called home for over 30 years, and express how appreciative she is of the people here who have supported her and the land she has become deeply fond of.

Katherine's retrospective, "My Journey as an Artist," is available for viewing at the Leslie Powell Foundation Gallery through Friday, Oct. 30. The gallery is open weekly from noon to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and is located at 620 SW D Ave in downtown Lawton.

For more information about the Leslie Powell Foundation Gallery, visit the gallery's official website. And for details about taking an art class with Katherine, follow her official artist Facebook page.

Photo Courtesy of Katherine Liontas-Warren

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