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Kathleen does not remember a time she did not draw and paint. By the age of three she was joining the local watercolour artist, who lived across the road from her home, at his table where the children, friends of his grand-daughter were always welcome to use the safe simple watercolours and coloured pencils opposite him.
She was inspired by several excellent Art Specialist Teachers in Primary School and in Secondary she was exhibiting regularly and entering competitions. She enjoyed much encouragement from her family and other village friends. At an early age she was one of the illustrators involved in the Anniversary Exhibition of Scottish hero Henry Bell of steamship fame. This gained her the first recognition in the press. She went on to study for National Examinations but of course Art and Design were the most important to her, a kind of second nature. Her keen interest in Geography developed into the landscape bias of her work. History she read for pleasure and studied it out with school as context for the History of Art.
Her opportunities at school gave her facility in Calligraphy, Graphic Design, Printing, Screen Printing, Fabric Crafts, Ceramics, Sculpture, as well as Drawing and Painting and she was always much involved in back stage work, publicity, costume making and scene painting for school productions. At the end of her school career, students of Art were given eight by five panels to work on for the end of year exhibition and two abstract expressionist works followed . She studied to A level in Art and English then attended evening classes at the Edinburgh College of Art to extend her experience and prepare a portfolio of work for application to the four Scottish Colleges. She was offered a place at Edinburgh and continued to study there, enjoying twenty six subjects to try out over the two Foundation Years. She went on to specialise in Drawing and Painting with Printmaking but took up the offer of continuing Photography, Graphics, Tapestry, Textile Printing at the Evening Sessions. The College Day lasted from nine thirty in the morning to four with a break for afternoon tea or coffee, then on to short sessions which included Head Life for Portraiture, Anatomy, History of Painting, History of Design, Appreciation of Architecture and History of the Cinema. After the evening meal, students were expected to attend evening classes from seven to nine.
Kathleen travelled in the summer break. She went to Canada where there were family members to offer accommodation. She studied courses on North American Indian Art, Inuit Sculpture and met some of the Canadian Group of Seven Artists. The love of the northern forests inspired her and she developed a great love of the work of Lawren Harris. Work progressed in watercolour and oil but acrylic was at the time somewhat primitive having to be mixed using pigment and PVA. Paintings could end up looking like plastic table cloths.
In her third year, a Painting trip away was planned and fifty students with their tutors took over a Scottish Youth Hostel in Wester Ross by Gairloch. This intensive study of landscape out of doors in a variety of media led to a stream of large canvases, one of which won the Scottish Pernod Competition with a five by five oil painting entitled “Jetty 1” from work carried out at the famous Inverue Gardens . The painting was purchased for the City of Edinburgh Gallery Young Artist Collection. Such encouragement resulted in Kathleen exhibiting regularly individually and part of various groups. A separate sheet of exhibition history is available.
Kathleen continues to paint landscape among other subjects, has been commissioned to paint several portraits as well as working in Ecclesiastical Embroidery. She directed a small group in Scotland to complete this type of textile work and was appointed as Artist Advisor for the Centenary Celebrations of St. Thomas Church, Muirkirk in Ayrshire. An Altar Frontal, Lectern Fall and two sets of Vestments were required as well as researching the history of the Church and advising the florists in the two year preparation period for the events. She was a founder member in a team to found the Livingston Art Association and together they managed a Community Art Gallery which celebrated touring exhibitions alternating with those of local artists, when we found there were forty working artists in that town. She taught Art and Design in High School for twenty years, diversifying into writing a Stage Set Design Module for Standard Grade and in developing Media Education Primary into Secondary with a view to that becoming a separate subject.
Kathleen paints in Italy in the autumn and recently has been doing the same in Ireland in the spring. She has visited Jordan, Syria, Turkey several times, Sinai, Crete, Rhodes, Malta, Cyprus, all of which have inspired her work which a few years ago culminated in an exhibition entitled “Sermons in Stones”. She offers classes in Painting and Print-making and has worked in her studios in Wellingore since 1992. Her work is still inspired by the professors she learned from in Scotland, in watercolour from Dame Elizabeth Blackadder, an Academician in several countries and is also grateful to Sir Robin Philipson, President of the Royal Scottish Academy, for his guidance in Oil Painting. Many other wonderful Scottish and International Artists have inspired her work and she is always looking for new slants to express in her work from what she sees around her.
Since moving south to Lincolnshire in 1991 she has operated from her studio in Wellingore Hall, holding several annual exhibitions of her current work. During this time she was commissioned to paint the 50th birthday portrait of Jennie Wylde Lincoln’s first woman Registrar. In 2000 she moved to Appleyard Studio, Laburnum House, Wellingore and continued to paint and give classes there in Painting, Calligraphy and Printmaking. The new studio is a converted Wheelwright’s barn which dominated a courtyard development of Georgian and earlier rural buildings comprising up to eight trades and crafts 1730-1960.
Her first Lincoln Retrospective Exhibition of paintings and mixed media works was held at McKinnell’s Solicitor’s Offices, 17-21,West Parade, opposite the main Police Station. Sales were encouraging. Two years later along the street the Exhibition “Sermons in Stones” opened in the new LAW Gallery February 2011 with work in oil, watercolour and mixed media, based on travels from Orkney, North of Scotland, Stonehenge, Cappadoccia and Petra. This collection was later requested to be hung at All Saint’s Church Wellingore as part of their anniversary celebration.
When her husband suffered a life changing accident in Lincoln, her association with the League of Friends Gallery by the Main Restaurant at the Queen’s Medical Centre, Nottingham began. She benefited from visual relief and stimulus during meal breaks from his bedside and enquired if she could be considered for a place in their programme of monthly exhibitions. She was invited to mount a show. The first exhibition there was “Memories” July – August 2018 and successfully attracted sales. Further exhibitions were delayed by Covid 19 and in 2022 she was asked to exhibit again. “Monumental Moments” 13th. July – 16th. August 2022 showed 32 works in Acrylic, Watercolour and oil depicting a variety of subjects from landscape to still life and resulted in six sales, gathering a following for her work.
Meantime an invitation came to submit work the First Lincoln Usher Gallery Open Exhibition and Competition. Two works were submitted and one was awarded 3rd. Prize. The remit was to offer work completed during lockdown and the chosen work demonstrated climate change in Italy. “A Stand of Dead Olives” was both striking and terrifying. It is to be featured in a book celebrating the exhibition published in May 2023. While painting in Tuscany she was asked to offer works to be shown in local galleries of restaurants in Montepulciano since she has painted around there since the early 1990s. three works found a place in a newly opened Quintequadri Art and eco Design Gallery off the main Corso, Via dell’Opio nel Corso, a centre for Art and Healing Therapies. There she met other contributing artists over lunch and the paintings were hung alongside a beautiful range of Raku fired sculpture.
Two paintings were also chosen for the Christmas card of and International Charity and she designed and embroidered the Ordination Chasuble for Father Damien Wade, to serve in the Brentwood Diocese, Essex on the themes of Brendan the Navigator.
