After retiring from full-time arts administration work in January 2019, West decided to focus on travel, wandering, and photographing the sights and people she found along the way, just for fun. Recent adventures included Greece, Costa Rica, Jamaica, and Panama. During the height of the pandemic, when travel was not possible, she focused her efforts closer to home, in Delaware.

West aims capture the extraordinary in the ordinary, finding and sharing beauty in things we might walk past every day but often fail to notice. Her favorite images include landscapes, seascapes, buildings, people, flowers, and animals, and capture the essence of a country or region, telling a compelling story. 

Since 2022, West has had two solo shows and her work was accepted into six in-person national, international or regional juried exhibitions and 12 international juried online exhibitions. As a 2022 Delaware Division of the Arts Emerging Artist Fellow, West's work was featured in three Award Winner exhibits in Dover, Rehoboth Beach, and Wilmington during 2022, Her photographs are now included in several private collections and five of her black & white prints showing scenes from Delaware are hanging permanently in the Marketplace at the Carvel State Office Building in Wilmington. 

Katie West spent most of her work life involved in the arts – working in marketing and public relations for dance organizations; grantmaking with the Illinois Arts Council, Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, and the Delaware Division of the Arts; dancing professionally; and teaching ballet, modern and character dance to children and adults.

Visit Katie West's Individual Artist Fellowship story here:

Delaware Division of the Arts Individual Artist Fellow