Things That Go Bump in My Head

KATE SHOOTER
SEPTEMBER 2020

Working from her studio in the Black Mountains of South Wales, Kate Shooter creates work using a mixture of wet and dry media. Kate studied art at Howard Gardens Art School in Cardiff and then Wimbledon School of Art in London, graduating in 1996. Since then she has exhibited in London, Bristol, Oxford and South Wales and her work is held in several private collections worldwide.

"This collection of work was mostly made in the last 12 months - a large chunk of it during 2020’s crazy lockdown and is, on reflection, a series of self portraits. My attempt to render on a flat surface the state of being ME; hurtling through an interior world, frantically grabbing at thoughts to make visible along the way. The work tends to teeter on the brink of tangible, being neither entirely abstract nor figurative. 

 It is this suggestion of narrative, this in-between world, that most preoccupies me in making work. I love the precarious balance between crass and subtle, funny and dark, object and subject. The sweet spot where opposite qualities exist side by side seems to me to illustrate most clearly the paradox of living; Mundanity in all its bleakness and hilarity, all its ugly beauty.

 In searching for this liminal state, whilst painting, I’m often reminded of that period in childhood before learning to read; when poring over illustrations, words dancing beneath them, is a spacious, abstract activity - ultimately comforting in its unknowing."