Kaeti Hinck is an interdisciplinary artist working in Washington, D.C.

Kaeti Hinck is a contemporary portrait and figurative artist based in Washington, D.C. She studied art as an undergraduate in the early 2000s, focused on photography and drawing, but set aside a studio practice for almost 15 years to focus on her journalism career. In the fall of 2020, while living in New York City, she decided to take an alla prima painting class offered by her neighborhood art school, Grand Central Atelier, and hasn’t stopped painting since.

Kaeti believes painting is a practice of offering deep attention to our subjects in an effort to understand something fundamental about our shared humanity. Her work combines classical training with contemporary subjects, and a feeling of movement and vitality. She explores themes of (dis)embodiment, and reclaiming and queering our understanding of beauty.

She is a member of the Portrait Society of America, the Cecilia Beaux Forum, and DC Arts Studios, a nonprofit member-run arts organization. She has studied with the late Carl Grupp, her first drawing mentor; Laura Tundel at The Atelier Studio Program of Fine Arts in Minneapolis; Suné Woods during her Nieman fellowship at Harvard; Sandra Sanchez and other instructors at Grand Central Atelier in New York; Alex Venezia at Lyme Academy; Joshua LaRock, Henrik Uldalen and Nick Alm through Workshops in Yorkshire; and N. Michelle Tully at Studio Escalier. Kaeti hosts regular portrait painting gatherings for artists and created Bad Art Night — a monthly gathering all about making art without expectations or pressure.

She draws particular inspiration from the New Woman painters of the turn of the century. In the words of Anna Bilinska:

I have something of a good disposition, but more of a bad one. I must be independent, for I would break the obligations on me. I believe in my abilities and have a love for this work. Were I to encounter obstacles, I would despise them. And what then? Now I have liberty, I am as happy as nobody else.