Found photographs are the source material for these paintings. Katherine Strause’s compositions allow us to bear witness to familiar stories through images of our shared past. By altering and re-arranging the original compositions a provoked subject matter emerges. Katherine Strause’s editing process encourages her audience to do the same as they interpret her images. Part documentary, part naturalistic expression, the painted compositions take a provocative stance towards its topics, be they discarded family album photos, archived civil rights photography, or beauty pageant publicity photographs.