Katie Pumphrey ’09 (Painting BFA)
On any given morning, Katie Pumphrey can usually be found in the water before heading to her studio. This routine has become second nature: Swim. Paint. Repeat.
To an outsider, those might seem like two separate lives, that of an internationally recognized marathon swimmer and that of a professional painter whose monumental canvases hang in galleries. But to Pumphrey, the distance between the two is surprisingly short.
Both begin with a leap into uncertainty. Both require endurance more than speed. And both have taught her that the only way to accomplish something that seems impossible is to stop looking at the finish line and simply take the next stroke.
That lesson began long before she arrived at MICA.
As a child, Pumphrey knew she wanted to be an artist. She laughs now remembering the board game, Life, where she always hoped to draw the artist career card. Art was never a question. Swimming, however, nearly changed the course of her future.
Throughout middle and high school, she devoted herself to competitive swimming, eventually reaching the point where she faced a difficult choice: continue swimming in college or pursue painting. She chose painting and applied to MICA. Yet, giving up competitive swimming led her back to the sport in an entirely different way.
Without collegiate competition dictating her schedule, she discovered open-water swimming, a discipline that prizes patience over speed and resilience over medals. The sport would eventually carry her across the English Channel three times, through California’s Catalina Channel, and on a celebrated 24-mile swim from the Chesapeake Bay Bridge to Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. But before any of that happened, she learned how to solve impossible problems in the classroom.
“MICA was incredibly challenging,” she says. “But in the best way.”
Like many art students, Pumphrey arrived at MICA believing talent alone might carry her forward. Instead, she encountered critiques that demanded clarity, professors who expected ambition, and assignments that often felt larger than her abilities. She was challenged with how to make a painting that communicates exactly what you want to say, and how to transform an intimidating blank canvas into something meaningful. Those questions became less frightening once she learned to break them into manageable pieces.
Years later, standing at the edge of the English Channel before a swim that would last more than 12 hours, she recognized the same challenge. If she thought about swimming across an ocean, the task felt overwhelming. If she focused on one stroke, she could keep moving. Painting and marathon swimming, she realized, were asking exactly the same thing of her.
Since graduating in 2009, Pumphrey’s artwork has evolved dramatically, but water has remained a constant companion. Her early work moved toward abstraction as she dismantled familiar imagery and rebuilt her visual language from the ground up. More recently, swimmers, waves, lane lines, tiled pools, and references to historical paintings have become recurring elements in her work.
She has discovered what fascinates her isn’t simply water itself but its rhythms: The repetition of waves. The repetition of tides. The repetition of a swimmer’s arms reaching forward hour after hour. Those patterns have become visual metaphors for something deeper.
Life, she says, arrives in waves. We experience moments of confidence before being knocked off balance, then slowly work our way back again. The repetitions in her paintings echo not only physical movement but also the emotional cycles of fear, anxiety, resilience, and hope. Her paintings ask viewers to linger inside those rhythms. They also invite them inside the space itself.
For her recent solo exhibition, Swimming Pool, Pumphrey resisted the traditional white-cube gallery experience. Instead, she painted an enormous swimming pool across the gallery floor, scattered pool furniture throughout the space, and watched as visitors claimed it as their own. People stopped by during lunch. They sat. They talked. They stayed. That, she says, is the point.
“I often say that being a contemporary artist means our job is to open a door and hopefully the viewer walks through it,” says Pumphrey.
Connection has become the thread running through everything she does. It explains why someone whose work often requires long hours alone in the studio has become equally committed to building communities outside of it.
After completing her historic Bay-to-Baltimore swim, Pumphrey discovered that the accomplishment opened unexpected opportunities. Schools invited her to speak. Businesses wanted to hear about perseverance. Environmental organizations sought her perspective on urban waterways. Soon she was representing Baltimore internationally, traveling to Rotterdam (the Netherlands) for the inaugural Swimmable Cities Summit, where leaders from around the world gathered to discuss how cities can reclaim rivers and harbors as places for recreation, health, and community. Pumphrey now serves as one of only two Swimmable Cities Sport Ambassadors.
While she has become a global phenome, her focus remains remarkably local. Baltimore, the city she originally came to for college, has become home. That affection inspired her to found Baltimore Open Water Swimmers, a nonprofit dedicated to creating opportunities for people to safely enjoy the city’s waterways.
Recently, the organization hosted the inaugural Baltimore Harbor One-Mile Swim, bringing together 100 swimmers supported by more than 50 volunteers, kayakers, first responders, and community partners.
Yet, the event wasn’t simply about endurance or competition. Part of every registration fee is dedicated to fund Baltimore City Recreation and Parks’ Learn to Swim program, with the goal of providing swimming lessons to 1,000 children during the organization’s first three years.
For Pumphrey, building community has become just as meaningful as swimming through it. That instinct may have deeper roots than she realized.
Long before she attended MICA, her grandmother, Dorothy Pumphrey, also studied at MICA, pursuing painting and fashion design before leaving school to marry and raise a family. Although she never completed her degree, she continued making art throughout her life, studying with MICA faculty and completing major commissions over several decades.
After Pumphrey graduated, she worked with MICA to award her grandmother an honorary degree, accepting it during commencement on Dorothy’s behalf. It remains one of the most meaningful moments of her connection to MICA.
Today, Pumphrey’s life remains a careful balancing act. Most mornings begin in the water before continuing in her studio, where she is building new bodies of work while planning future exhibitions. She also has another English Channel crossing in her sights and hopes to exhibit artwork in England during the same trip.
It sounds exhausting, but to her, it simply feels like life. There are, as Pumphrey notes, remarkable similarities between artists and marathon swimmers: Both spend long hours alone. Both must make peace with rejection and failure. Both pursue goals that often appear irrational to everyone else. And both discover that the work becomes richer when it is ultimately shared with a community.
It is advice she has followed herself, from choosing painting over collegiate swimming, to swimming across some of the world’s most challenging waters, to building a career that refuses to separate art from athleticism, advocacy from creativity, or individual achievement from community. For her, creativity and movement have always been part of the same journey.
After all, whether crossing the English Channel, swimming through Baltimore Harbor, or facing a blank canvas, Pumphrey has learned that the only way forward is the same way she has always approached it: Stroke by stroke.
Join the festivities as MICA honors its 200-year history, recognizes its present success, and looks forward to a bright future. Throughout 2026, the College will be sharing community stories and announcing one-of-a-kind events on campus, in Baltimore, and beyond.
