Kate Shooter, 'Might As Well Fall'

Kate studied Fine art at Howard Gardens Art School in Cardiff and then Wimbledon School of Art in London. Her practice is based in South Wales where she paints in her home studio in the black Mountains.

“Often during making a painting I’m reminded of mining or excavating. It’s like searching for a very particular thing that I don’t have a reference for, but I know along the way I’ll find pretty, shiny bits and pieces that will have to be discarded and that’ll be a wrench. Agonising in fact.

I like the idea of unearthing the final work whilst it’s in flux. I stop time at that moment to let it sit on the surface, but the image is in a state of precarious change. In this way I’m less painter more voyeur. I’ve uncovered an image at a very private moment of finding or still searching for itself. It’s a curious, even perverse activity.

I watched a video of an octopus sleeping the other day on You Tube. Rapid and vivid changes in colour and pattern swept across the surface of the creature’s body as it slept, presumably in reaction to whatever scenarios were playing out in its dreams. I was struck by the same voyeuristic feeling that I stumble upon when finishing a painting; guiltily witness to a thing in a state of vulnerable and private transition.”