Katherine Lathrop McSpadden, an artist, teacher, and gardener who was known as Kate, spent every summer of her life until her mid-20s in Amagansett. She grew up sailing on Gardiner’s Bay at the Devon Yacht Club, riding at Stony Hill Stables, and her landscape paintings were inspired by the ocean vistas on Bluff Road, her family said.
Ms. McSpadden died of a cerebral hemorrhage at home in Essex, Conn., on July 26. She was 40.
An art history major at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, she won the Phi Beta Kappa writing prize as a freshman and the Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge Hamblet Award in studio art her senior year. She graduated in 2005.
Ms. McSpadden taught architecture, studio art, art history, photography, ceramics, and French at Avon Old Farms School in Avon, Conn., from 2012 to 2019. She was also a dorm parent and yearbook adviser. “Her spirit lives on in the art she created and curated and in the students she inspired at Avon Old Farms,” her family said.
A self-described “plant nerd,” while working at Ballek’s Garden Center in East Haddam, Conn., from 2020 until this year, she studied horticulture through the master gardener program at the University of Connecticut. She had just established her own landscape design business before her death.
“Kate was a generous and thoughtful friend with an innate sense of empathy and an extraordinary intellectual curiosity,” according to her family. “She reveled in a heated political discussion, live jazz, modern art, philosophy, and a great pair of Jimmy Choos.”
Born in New York City on July 18, 1982, to Jack D. McSpadden Jr. and the former Ruth Ann Wood, she attended the Chapin School in Manhattan and Miss Porter’s School in Farmington, Conn.
Ms. McSpadden is survived by her parents, a sister, Margaret McSpadden of East Hampton, a brother, Charlie McSpadden of Venice, Calif., her grandmother Beverly Spooner, and her fiancé, Tom Taylor, “with whom she shared a deeply loving partnership,” her family said. Her beloved dog, Toby, and many aunts, uncles, and cousins also survive. A brief marriage to Brad Carpenter ended in divorce.
A celebration of her life will be held at the Church of the Heavenly Rest in Manhattan on Sept. 15 at 4 p.m. The family has suggested memorial donations to the Essex Land Trust, P.O. Box 373, Essex, Conn. 06426, or the Department of Art, Vanderbilt University, 2301 Vanderbilt Place, PMB #1660, Nashville 37235-1660.
