Kate grew up in Suffolk where the skies are vast and the land is low and flat. Her grandad was an architect and he taught her the rudiments of technical drawing when she was 9. He made a drawing board and a T square, and showed Kate how to sharpen a pencil with a knife.
Kate ventured north to York were she studied fine art at University (YSJ) and specialised in textile design. She had fun with pots of wax, resin, shiny fabrics and butterfly’s wings. From there she spent a year in Huddersfield where she studied industrial applications and CAD; fewer butterflies, more Loom Sheds!
Kate's first design job was in a sterile studio changing colourways of prints to match company logos and she was never allowed to get my hands dirty. She missed her fingers being permanently stained with Prussian blue, and so started to paint again.
In 1999 Kate moved to Sheffield, and after a while started to sell her work in galleries, and in the art and craft markets there. Kate moved to Hebden Bridge, her current home, in 2005.
Kate's textile design background is always present in the way that she paints, and interprets what is around her. She sees patterns in everything; the hills adorned with houses and washing lines, rows of flower pots and stripes of brightly painted drain pipes. Lines of gold thread trace lines through the landscape, and gold leaf changes the surface of her pictures with the changing light of day.
There are never people in Kate's pictures but they’re full of life and warmth.