KATRINA WILKIE - PAINTER

I am essentially a landscape painter (although I do sometimes work from other subject matter). The starting point for a painting is usually a subject I see in my environment, it might simply be a series of shapes or colour relationships that attract me when walking in the landscape around my home in the Fens. I do an initial sketch either in a sketchbook or now I’ve started using colour on an iPad. I start the painting using these sketches and some photographic references, but once the painting is well underway it seems to direct its own progress. I don’t include all topographical details, only those I feel are necessary for the painting to work. I see the final painting as a distillation of my response to the subject.

I have exhibited my work in many group exhibitions and regularly take part in Cambridge Open Studios and Cambridge Drawing Society exhibitions. I have also had a number of exhibitions at the Old Fire Engine House, Ely.

In the last few years, several of my paintings have been exhibited in the summer and winter group exhibitions at the Russell Gallery, Putney, London, and I have had work selected for the New English Art Club’s Annual Exhibition and the Royal Watercolour Society’s Contemporary Watercolour Competition.

From 1985 to 1993 I was a freelance illustrator working in both publishing and advertising. Past clients have included, Virago, Jonathan Cape, The Oxford University Press, The Telegraph, The Observer, The Times Educational Supplement, BT, and Chrysalis TV. A few years ago I decided to write and illustrate a children’s book titled, “Clara The Camel Needs Help From Her Friends”, which I self-published in 2018.

In the 1990s I was commissioned to create a number of paintings and prints by JD Weatherspoons for their pubs.

Over the years other creative employment has included, designing, making, and selling knitwear and textile jewellery; mural painting and specialist decoration; part-time art teaching.