Kathy Marlene Bailey has known herself to be an artist as long as she can remember. She was encouraged at home, with a mother and father who were both artists. Kathy's post secondary art education was started at Guelph University and completed at Sheridan College and University of Toronto. She obtained a Creative Arts diploma and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Art Education (fine art with an educational twist!). After the early years of motherhood, she began putting serious effort toward her fine art career in 1995. In her artwork, Kathy always held two fascinations: water and people. Both have dominated her art since childhood.

Since being the tiniest toddler, Kathy has been spellbound by the water, trying to catch its rhythm and its magic with her eyes. Since her first painting at age seventeen, she has subsequently been trying to "catch it" with paint. Kathy is one of a handful of artists in Canada who works in the highly specialized field of traditional glaze oil painting. This extremely old method of painting is an ideal medium for exploring water. With it, she is able to record astounding levels of colour detail. The method has limitless gages to pull and tweek colour, value and colour quality. In her paintings, transparency and translucency, light and dark, vivid and quiet colours dance together in rich harmonic melody, dancing to her eyes and soul.

Although Kathy's artistic focus has been exclusively painting for a number of years, from about 1994 to 2004, she also had an extensive career as a sculptor, primarily making small, fine, hand-modeled sculptures. It was in porcelain clay that Kathy could explore her passion for the intricacies and wonder of humanity. Working in amazingly minute detail, she created upward of 500 little clay people - individual right down to each fingernail. She became known for her JOY! Elves, JOY! Nativity Figures and JOY! Angels. People from all around the world have collected her tiny sculptures. For many years her work could be found at Collected Works Gallery, The Guild Shop, and the AGO Shop in Toronto and at the Williams Mill in Glen Williams where she had her studio.

Kathy's paintings have also been sold for many years in commercial galleries across Ontario as well as in New York State. Galleries most recently representing Kathy for several years include the Gallery Wall in The Kingsway in Toronto and Killarney Lodge Gallery in Algonquin Park. She has participated in Event Shows like the Toronto Art Expo and the Queen West Art Crawl in Toronto. She often exhibits her work in juried shows and has won several awards including "Best in Show" and "Peoples Choice". In 2007, Kathy displayed glaze oil waterscapes in, "The Gull River and My Haliburton Home", a solo exhibition at the Agnes Jamieson Public Art Gallery in Minden, Ontario.

Since about 1995 Kathy has also put serious effort towards teaching art. She has a great passion for teaching and has become quite well known for it. She teaches at professional and community levels and has specially developed programs in three areas: advanced colour theory (The Nitty Gritty on Colour - The Qualities of Colour), technical programs in the methods of pre-Impressionist masters (Traditional Glaze Oil Painting - Modern Applications) as well as programs in right brain development (Artskills for Adults, Artskills for Kids, Art Therapy for Alzheimers Patients). She teaches in her own studio in Oakville, ON, at Burlington Art Centre, Visual Arts Mississauga, Canadore College in Parry Sound and will soon be painting and teaching workshops at her own summer house studio, in Old Perlican, Newfoundland. Life is exciting. Wonder, Spirit and Beauty are everywhere.