Eighty watercolors on Arches paper. Four ventitych panels, each 88×150in (7’4″×12’6″). A room enclosed by painted walls, 7’4″×50′ running dimension. Washington DC, 2020–2026.
From September 2020 to August 2026, during two United States Presidential elections and everything that surrounded them, I painted Washington DC live onsite — at the Supreme Court, the US Capitol, the National Mall, the White House, Arlington Cemetery, and the streets of Capitol Hill. I painted in the press enclosures and on the sidewalks, from a bicycle, in every weather. There are 450 watercolors in the DC Reportage Series. DCWall is drawn from these paintings.
DCWall is a monumental installation of four ventitych watercolors, twenty paintings to each panel, arranged to enclose a room. Two panels are complete. The remaining two are being painted live in the streets of Washington DC during the summer of 2026, as the United States celebrates its 250th anniversary on the National Mall and in the surrounding public spaces where this work has always been made.
These paintings were made outside, as events happened. Each of the eighty watercolors was painted on the street, on paper, on the day — at the Ruth Bader Ginsburg memorial at the Supreme Court, during the Amy Coney Barrett confirmation hearings, at the MAGA marches, as the razor wire went up around the Capitol after January 6, as soldiers stood inside the wall, as the wall came down again. The still life and portrait paintings made on rainy days indoors always referenced what was happening outside — everything at that time spun back to DC.
Watercolor on paper cannot be repaired or repainted the way oils or acrylics can. What is in these works is what was there, on that day. The period they document is gone. Both are unrepeatable.
Four of the eighty watercolors in DCWall are currently on loan to the U.S. Ambassador to Canada, selected for the official Embassy Residence in Ottawa through the State Department’s Artist in Embassies program. They will return to the installation within three years.
DCWall will be complete in September 2026. It was made in public, for the public, about the most public events of our time. It belongs on a wall where people can stand up in front of it.
For the complete DC Reportage Series — all 450 paintings arranged as a walk through the city — see the Washington DC Reportage Paintings page.
Washington DC Reportage Paintings 2020–2026
Katherine Dolgy Ludwig is a Brooklyn-based artist who has worked for over thirty years in the United States, Canada, England, and France. Over twenty solo exhibitions. Recent retrospectives at the American University of Paris and the London Chelsea Arts Club. Work featured in publications such as The New York Times, NYU Humanus, and Los Angeles Times, with honors and fellowships selected by jurors at freeDimensional, A.I.R. Gallery Chelsea, the Metropolitan Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, The Brooklyn Rail, NYU Tisch, Art in America, and the London Royal Academy. Her art is in the permanent collections of Mayor Bloomberg, National Arts Club, Pentagon, Playboy, Globe Theatre, Ornette Coleman, and Pete Townshend.