Housecats | How Felines Influenced Edie McKee Harper’s Creative Work

Butch. Cookie. Bitsy. Katrinka. These are just a few of the cats who pounced around the household of Edie McKee Harper, Charley Harper, and their son Brett Harper. You can find their essence embedded in the work of these artists, but these whiskered faces specifically take the spotlight across the work of Edie McKee Harper. Explore how cats impacted her artistry and creative process with Senior Manager of Marketing and Engagement Kay E. Bancroft, with research by Assistant Curator Angela Fuller.

As a fellow creative, cat-lover, and poet, I feel a real kinship with Edie McKee Harper’s work. The colorful play and whimsy, the depictions of familiar stories and creatures, and her love of puns and poems strike a chord within me that feel so familiar and friendly, so full of joy. With her penchant for storytelling, bold color, and multimedia artistry, Harper’s creative career spanning more than six decades is nothing short of extraordinary. Through her depictions of “a joyful parade of cats, childhood memories, and Old and New Testament stories (which she called ‘A New Look at the Old Book’),”[1] Harper brought the favorite parts of her world to life via fiber arts, photography, enamels, painting, poetry, and more.

From the onset of her artistic career in the 1940s, Harper’s love of nature blossoms through photographs of sand dunes and oceans, paintings of Kentucky landscapes and sunflowers. Color and shape came to the forefront through enamels and oil paintings in the 1950s, some of which included the first iterations of animals in her work, but she deviated from the subject to explore other themes and media, returning in the 1980s and 1990s to cats and the natural world.[2]

The Harpers’ home always had a cat (or two or three!) lurking around its halls, keeping the artists company as they worked and lived, small fluffy companions each with unique personalities and quirks. There was Butch (a.k.a. Butchie) a large, white cat who roamed the Roselawn neighborhood where the family then resided, who starred in many of Harper’s paintings including Under the Tree. Then Cookie, a tuxedo cat with a good memory who inspired the painting Magnificat, and Bitsy, a grey and white cat that Brett Harper had found canoeing at Lake Cowan. There was Sheba, a Burmese, Harper’s mother’s cat who the family inherited and who inspired the painting Cleopetra. And then there was Harper’s favorite cat of them all: Katrinka, who was the inspiration for one of her iconic works, Crazy Cat on Crazy Quilt (Patches).

“Katrinka had the fate of being a long-haired calico in a short-haired cattery where cats were raised. So, somebody from South Carolina knew that [Edie] would love to have the calico cat, and it was flown up here,” notes Brett Harper.

He also says of his mother in the new catalog Edie McKee Harper: Modernist at Play that “[she] appreciated all animals, but cats held a special place in her heart and her art, their savvy charm captured in pun-filled works that evoke quirky regality.” With each of these cats comes a story, a unique little life that coincided with the daily lives and artistry of the Harper family, and I think this is why Edie Harper had such an adoration for these creatures.  Their silly quirks, their energy, the way they move and play, all lend themselves to the way she created—boldly, brightly, playfully, and masterfully. This is further reinforced by the playful poems and prose that often accompany her works. 

Alongside the painting Kitten ‘n’ Knittin’ (which features Harper’s beloved Katrinka) comes the poem:

Where there’s some knittin’
There’s a kitten on th’ knittin’
Or a kitten in th’ knittin’.
But where there’s a kitten
There's no knittin’. 

The painting is colorful and complex, almost camouflaging a kitten in a basket of yarn, also embodied by the accompanying poem. The everyday meshes with wonder across both media, as does her love of these chaotic, cuddly companions.

Not only does this kind of camouflaging and whimsy exist in Kitten ‘n’ Knittin’, it translates across many of Harper’s cat artworks. In one, a beige-furred cat hides amid the sands of a beach, in another a cream-colored cat hides behind the skull of a cow, and others play amongst the grasses and snow or hide their stripes and spots inside of baskets or amongst the colorful patterns of quilts and couches. 

The creativity and curiosity of cats as beings aligns so deeply with the artistic and linguistic play that Edie’s work so embodies, which is why I see such a tether between her, her cats, and her art. There is a tether there that lies beneath, waiting for us to find like a cat lying in the shadows, ready to play with us. 

You can explore the vivid color, wit, and wonder of Edie McKee Harper’s artistry in Edie McKee Harper: Modernist at Play, on view at the Taft Museum of Art October 17, 2026-January 24, 2027.