ARTIST’S STATEMENT
67 Portraits is a series of expressive paintings unified by a limited palette, honoring my friends and colleagues from investment bank Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, lost on the 88th and 89th floors of 2 World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Most of the reference photos used to create these portraits are from the New York Times “Portraits of Grief” series and the Voices Center for Resilience, supplemented by KBW community-sourced memorial imagery. This series is my offering to them.
Each painting is 16 x 12 inches — all sixty-seven the same size and format. They are distilled interpretations that simplify form, remove backgrounds, and present each person within the same visual language, with the intention of honoring them as individuals while also conveying the sense of a community lost together.
The paintings are rendered in a limited palette of warm taupe, dusty rose, and pale blue— reminiscent of the clear blue sky that morning — so that when hung together, they appear bathed in a warm light.
We were such a young firm. Beautiful people in the middle of their lives, with families and friends who loved them, and colleagues who will never forget their faces or laughs. I thought if I could paint them, I could show the enormity of what was lost. These portraits are an attempt to make those lives visible again— so that they are seen, and never forgotten. It is my intention that the sixty-seven paintings remain together — a unified field of remembrance.
Katie Ré Scheidt Roxbury, CT 2026
The sixty-seven paintings will remain together as a single body of work. They are not for sale. A print of each portrait is offered as a gift to the family of the colleague it honors.
For exhibition inquiries, or for families wishing to receive their print, please write to info@katierescheidt.com.
In loving memory of my friends and colleagues at KBW.