Sometimes I Fall and Never Hit the Ground

MAY 2022

In this new body of work the abstract morphs into half formed still life compositions that are at once familiar and unknowable. There is a surreal, symbolic quality to these paintings that viewed as a whole invite a puzzle-like unravelling. Kate tells us...

“I’ve been writing down dreams over the past few months and whilst musing on their wider meanings have been struck by a similarity in how I unpick stories in my paintings. All the work begins with my habit of automatic drawing and then during the formal wrestle with colour and composition familiar motifs emerge. Whilst no linear narrative is intended there is often an otherworldly sense of space and object at play that subverts the familiar. A little like a word repeated over and over that begins to lose its meaning.”

In a number of pieces where the emergent motifs are strongly defined, (Jungian symbols of ‘house’ and ‘ladder’ echo throughout this collection) there is a clear sense of metaphor at play. Paintings that teeter on the brink of knowable are enigmatic, in the way more opaque dreams are; and then some of Kate’s works seem to operate simply as pauses - places to gather your thoughts. She says...

“I feel in the last few months like I’ve had all my hard edges worn smooth and it shows in the work. With my guard down this collection is acutely introspective, softer than usual, but intensely purposeful.”