About Kate

Kate is a professional portrait artist and tutor. She splits her working week as a commissioned artist, runs her own art course business, tutors for London Art College, is a freelance graphic designer and occasionally trains graphics software, as well as cooking scrummy cakes for her art classes. She qualified as a graphic designer in 1988 and worked full-time in the industry until 2002 when she went part-time to develop her love of painting. Kate is a self-taught artist and has used her training as a graphic designer to build her website and art business.

Kate has recently moved to an old thatched cottage in a village near Chichester, West Sussex, England, with husband, Chester, and their black cat. She has exciting plans to turn one of the outhouses into a working art studio.

For her portraits, Kate's aim is to capture the personality of an animal or person and apply it to a canvas so their character shines through. She either spends time with the pet or person if possible, or works from a variety of different photographs. She loves texture and uses acrylic paints thick for impasto work and watered down for glazes. She paints on a variety of surfaces from box canvases and artboards to MDF and slate.

As Kate produces mostly commissioned artwork she doesn’t hold many examples to display in galleries but has many happy customers, some of whose quotes you can read on the pages of this website. Follow the progression of her latest artworks on her blog: http://portrait-artist-kate.blogspot.com

In 2006 she won the Open Art Exhibition in Cranleigh, Guildford, Surrey which resulted in a solo exhibition the following summer. She has had various artworks exhibited in other exhibitions along the south coast including Worthing pier and has created numerous Christmas card designs printed and sold through different charities over the years.

After gaining an adult education teaching qualification, Kate teaches art courses, workshops and private tuition at various venues and homes around Sussex and has joined the team of tutors at London Art College to tutor their Pet Portraits Diploma Course. Subjects on her courses include comprehensive drawing skills (line, tone, learning to draw with the right side of brain, perspective and scale); soft pastels, watercolours, acrylic paints and mixed media. Workshops include more specialised areas of interest like creating realistic skin tones or fur, effective colour mixing, reflections in water, how to get perspective into landscapes and other tips and techniques for beginners to improvers. Please contact Kate if you are interested in classes - requests for any subject or medium are welcomed and homemade cake is often included!

In 2005 Kate was commissioned to paint the portraits of a computer training company in London and continues to add additional faces to the gallery at Mouse Training, Worship Street, London, as new trainers are taken on.

The pictures above aim to show the progression of my 'attractive' self-portrait! It shows the gradual building up of colour washes and detail using acrylic paints and was completed on a deep edge box canvas size 16" x 20".

Acrylic paints are waterproof when dry so they can be painted over without moving the pigments underneath, unlike watercolour paints. They can be applied like oil paints but with a quicker drying time and a lot less smell. These excellent properties mean I can paint on almost anything from canvas to stone, wood, crockery and tiles. The list is almost endless! The fabulous properties of acrylics have also caused me to experiment with incorporating fragrance into my artwork. Smells can trigger past memories and evoke strong emotion. To discuss how artworks can be customised to any particular shape or size…

Contact Kate via email or call
01243 276567 or 0777 3499664

Contact Kate

To enquire about a commission or an art class please fill in this contact form or contact Kate by phone on 01243 276567