Exhibition by Kate Davies

Born into a working-class Midlands family, Kate started scribbling on pieces of scrap paper as soon as she could hold a pencil. She started school at the age of four and was allowed to write her own name (partly backwards) in the school register. Infant daubs gave way to art projects which often found their way onto the classroom walls; and having caught herself watching the way light fell on classmates’ hair and clothes, and the way their jerseys and their skin creased at elbows and knees, instead of listening to the teacher explaining long division, she started studying art officially and properly so that she could spend time staring at the way the world was put together without getting told off. ‘O’ Level led to ‘A’ Level, and then to an Art Foundation diploma at Birmingham Polytechnic.

Her intention was to become a graphic designer; but after a chilling encounter with the strong possibility of being required in future to work to a strict and restrictive advertising brief, she skipped sideways into stage and lighting design, and completed a BA(Hons) in Performing Arts at the University of Kent instead. A strong technical bent and an understanding of how things worked led to a career in IT; but the creative urge was only temporarily dormant, and night-school classes in photography and darkroom techniques just inflamed Kate’s fascination with light and dark and high contrast.

After a while she began to paint light-drenched landscapes, and in particular the near-forensic details of stonework and architecture. The tension between light and shadow just had to be explored – substance being defined by the insubstantial. Her paintings are just as much a product of her grasp of physics as they are of her creative imagination. A technician in all things, her view of the world is the camera’s view, full of planes and sight-lines and the manipulation of light.

Although she has experimented with other media such as chalk and charcoal, pencil and ink, and even good old biro, the vibrancy and density of acrylic gives the most consistently satisfying impact, and provides the means for an attempt at least at the rendering of solidity. Kate will continue painting until she gets it right.

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