Kate Shooter works from her studio near Abergavenny in south Wales, creating works which often blur the line between abstraction and representation, and sometimes incorporate text creating an interplay between word and images. Kate generally uses a mixture of wet and dry media in her work, making works which often combine acrylic paint, oil pastel, and charcoal. Kate has described how she paints very instinctively, beginning with fast, intuitive mark making, then building texture and colour, adding and taking away until a composition settles, followed by a process of ‘fierce editing‘.

Kate’s approach to painting has always been process driven. A fast conversation between mark and response allowing subconscious narrative to bubble up through the layers. Works often hover in that liminal space between abstraction and figuration. Teetering as always on the brink of knowable this ‘body’ of work seems to be exactly that… the artist’s experience of her physical self. Via enigmatic suggestions of body parts, fantastical x-rays, and interior landscapes we are exposed to the physical experience of being in one’s self at an almost cellular level.

“I paint intuitively, making fast decisions just ahead of allowing any conscious narrative to dictate. I’ve learnt my process invariably leads to a kind of enigmatic self-portrait making. The resulting work is at root my desire to render as authentically as possible what it is to be me; a human - in a house of blood and bones with its internal light show of chemicals firing chaotic highs and lows.”

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.