Kate Downie: There and Back

The ideas around the human journey, both literally, travelling through the landscape and philosophically, our advancement, through civilisation, have been themes in Kate’s work for the last decade or more. 

Her own youthful migration in the 1960s, from North Carolina to the North East coast of Scotland, led to an early cultural as well as geographic transition that left an indelible impression. Certainly, her arrival on the banks of the Ythan Estuary, North of Aberdeen gave her a fascination with tidal channels and their crossings, that led her recording bridges in China, Australia and of course the Forth Road Bridge closer to home. When the latter celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 2014 Kate was the natural choice as first artist in residence.

Bridges are emblematic in Kate’s work, a device to convey the various journeys in our lives. In this body of work however there is a more personal element, for her preparation has coincided with an uprooting from her established life in Edinburgh to a new home and purpose-built studio in rural Fife. The paintings capture and to a certain extent work through her journey from one stage of her life to the next and simultaneously record the physical process of commuting ‘back and forth’.

This is Kate’s first solo exhibition with Panter & Hall and we are delighted to play a part in the artistic journey of such a remarkable and illustrious talent.

- Matthew Hall April 2019