Art lives here

By: Jeannette de Beauvoir, July 22, 2011

Katherine Baltivik - Marina

In many ways, artist Katherine Baltivik is Provincetown.

“I came here in the early seventies,” the artist and co-owner of the Charles-Baltivik Gallery says.

“I knew I belonged here. So I made a plan and worked my derrière off and made it happen.”

Baltivik didn’t just want to be another painter working in Provincetown: she wanted everything—her life, her art, her civic involvement—to be intricately interwoven with the town.

“I came here with this dream, to capture the history of the town and its ever-changing façade,” she says.

And it’s that façade for which she has become rightfully famous: her intricate renditions of houses, public buildings, boats, dunes, and harbor.

“My painting styles are directly influenced by Provincetown masters such as Blanche Lazell and the color theories of Hans Hoffman,” Baltivik says.

“My work is always changing as I am continuously refining it, from doing detailed works on copper to town-centered themes on maplewood, to landscapes and buildings, shorelines and oceans. What I’m really trying to do is portray the real Provincetown through my eyes.”

An open door

But what is it about this place that is so magical to her?

“I fit here,” Baltivik answers with a shrug and a smile. “I love it all: the lifestyle and people. The water. The magnificent ever-changing environment. The hidden places. The quiet winters to paint. The busy summers with all that you can do. I live on the top of a dune where I am high above it all and surrounded by quiet ...”

Coming to Provincetown was clearly her destiny. “I was in the gallery and talking to the woman who had just bought it and she suddenly, after only three months, wanted out. A door opened and it was time to go through!”

“Provincetown is rich in art and history,” Baltivik says. “I feel part of that, and I’m developing a place in the long line of artists that came before me and will come after me.”

She is intensely aware of her place in that continuum of Provincetown artists—and of her mission to the town. The Charles-Baltivik gallery only shows work produced by Provincetown artists.

“The idea is to take where they left off and carry it into the twenty-first century,” she says.

“My gallery keeps the same tradition, Provincetown art by those who love the town and work here, their Provincetown. As both an artist and a gallery owner, Provincetown and its history is always my focus.”

 

If you go:

Charles-Baltivik Gallery, 432 Commercial Street,
 Provincetown

(508) 487-3611