Born in 1970, Kate Sherman grew up on the Jurassic coast of Dorset. After graduating in 1993 with a degree in Fine Art, she continued her painting practice, while working at a fine art screen-printing studio. She continued to work in London for over ten years, curating and dealing in modern and contemporary British art, before deciding in 2005 to paint full time. She now lives and works in Sussex.
Her paintings have a delicate impasto surface and brisk brush marks which belie their intricate structure – where compositions of skylines, horizon lines and road lines are sensitively balanced by fence posts, signposts or trees.
The paintings, all oil on board, originate from photographs she has taken of her surrounding landscape. This photographic source is important because the paintings capture a reflective notion of memory, of the emotional distance between a real landscape and a photograph, between experience and longing. It is a poignant and quiet melancholy reminiscent of Edward Hopper, that is expressed both by the portrayal of sparse unpopulated landscapes containing elemental traces of man, and by her restrained palette which is often suffused in a reserved northern European light of chalky blues and pink-blushed greys.
In 2015 & 2018 Kate exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.
Exhibitions
Jan 2020 The Seventh View, Group Exhibition, C24 Gallery, New York
Nov 2019 ING Discerning Eye Exhibition, Mall Galleries, London
June 2019 Coast, Solo Exhibition, ONCA Gallery, Brighton
Oct 2018 Wells Art Contemporary, Somerset
Sept 2018 Forest, Solo Exhibition, Reuben Colley Fine Art, Birmingham
June 2018 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London
March 2018 Blossom & Forest, Solo Exhibition, Rowe & Williams Gallery, Suffolk
Nov 2017 Downland, Solo Exhibition, The Jointure Gallery, Ditchling
Nov 2016 Rendlesham, Solo Exhibition, ONCA Gallery, Brighton
Oct 2015 The National Open Art Competition, Royal College of Art, London
Oct 2015 Moving Images, Solo Exhibition, The Jointure Gallery, Ditchling
June 2015 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London
Education
BA Hons Fine Art Degree, Birmingham (University of Central England) 1990-93
Artist Statement
I make paintings essentially to communicate a feeling or emotion. I use the photographic image as my subject because it is such a familiar vehicle for shared experience and has become an almost ubiquitous screen through which we view reality. It encourages a narrative in the work and can be used to examine ‘reality’ from unexpected angles.
The relationship between painted surface and photographic image fascinates me. I apply the paint initially with brushes and then use strips of card, with a sideways movement to drag and blur the paint, destroying and simultaneously carving out the image. This mechanical application balances the gestural, handmade-ness while communicating with the origins of the mechanised photo-image.