Artist:
Kate Downie
Title: Indigo Road
Medium:Lithograph
Image size (cm) h x w: 38 x 54cm
Edition size: 20
Indigo Road,
as concept, has had many previous lives.
Featuring initially as one of the central images in the major solo exhibition,
“East”, at the Talbot Rice Gallery in 2001, it reflects
my experience of an important place in my life, both emotionally and
geographically.
Set in a remote peninsular corner of the north-east of Scotland, this place featured as the exit-road in my short film “Driven”, a computer generated “still” of which was then translated into a monotype. On the way, Indigo Road has appeared as a poster detail, on web sites, and even on a gable-end mural. But rather than viewing this as the hackneyed reworking of an old image, I believe that the almost mystical processes of change through reproduction adds deeper and more penetrating insights.
This new lithograph
commission with the creative partnership of Alastair Clark, has enabled
me the chance to capture that subtle, elusive state which hovers between
aloneness and serenity.
Valentine’s Shed is a painting which I completed last year and
which further explores this human condition. It, too, is set in the
north-east, but in this case the man-made light source spilling out
from the shed plays a harsh contrast to the subtle dusk glow at the
end of the day.
C.V.
Kate Downie
graduated in Fine Art at Grays school of Art, Aberdeen and has been
practising a combination of painting, drawing, printmaking and photography
for over 20 years.
She exhibits her work extensively in Europe and in the UK, and has held
artists studio residencies both in Amsterdam and Paris. A brewery, a
maternity hospital, an oil rig and an island underneath the Forth Rail
Bridge are only a few of the bizarre places where she has established
studios in the UK.. Downie has taught extensively both in art colleges
and
universities and has directed major public and community art projects
since 1987. She is
currently director of the Tuesday School of Art in Leith.
Downie always has at least 5 new projects up her sleeve at any one time,
and has recently returned from a successful exhibition of new work,
“Les Routes des Travaux” in Corsica as part of a festival
of Scottish culture. Forthcoming projects include a major solo show
at the Gracefield Arts Centre, Dumfries in July this year, and participation
in “SSA Select” at the Park Gallery, Falkirk, “Moving
Solutions”, Bonhoga Gallery, Shetland. In 2004 the artist returns
for a research post in Corsica, having been awarded an residency with
the Foundation Lazaret D’Aspretto.
Perhaps best known for sweeping and rather grubby panoramas of a post
industrial land, the artist prefers her work to be viewed as “Conceptual
Expressionism”. She loves all print medium but hates editioning
prints. She often uses printmaking as a path to creating a unique image.
Through monotype, over painted etchings, collage, and digital editing,
she extends her studio practice into the print workshop.
PUBLICATIONS/
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1990 Urban Circus Exhibition Catalogue. Published by Collins Gallery,
Strathclyde University
1991 The First 100 Years. Society of Scottish Artists Publication. Text
by Cordelia Oliver.
1993 Contemporary Painting in Scotland by Bill Hare. Craftsman House
Publishers.
1994 Scottish Art in the 20th Century by Duncan MacMillan. Mainstream
Publishers.
1995 Next? Artists, Residencies & Hospitals. Exhibition Catalogue.
Published by City ArtsCentre, Edinburgh
1996 Artist & Illustrators Magazine. Featured Artist. June 96.
1996 The Motor Show: Urban Themes in British Painting by Oliver Bevan.
2000 Allegemeines Kunstlerlexicon, World biographical Dictionary of
Artists
Scottish Art 1460 - 2000 by Duncan Macmillan, Mainstream Publishing
2001 Exhibition Catalogue, ”East”. Published by University
of Edinburgh.
The Dictionary of Scottish Painters 1600 - the Present. Cannongate Books
Ltd.