I’m a Fife-based visual artist, with a focus on drawing and movement. My practice is primarily exhibition-based and strongly linked to people and place. To this end much of my work has been created though residences in diverse public areas such as an oil rig, a 20th century suspension bridge, a maternity hospital in Glasgow and a Norwegian fishing village. I am currently collaborating with Glasgow Women’s Library for a future project based on the completion of a painting by Joan Eardley, left unfinished in her Glasgow studio at the time of her death, and also working with Gillian MacFarland SSA to create a process-based collaborative work ArtWalk 2024, linking artists and communities across Fife in a summer long sequential co-walking, performance and mapping project. Since the 1980’s I have engaged in many artforms, working in murals, painting, performance, moving image, installation, printmaking, photography and writing, all underpinned by drawing. This year I was recipient of The Fosskleiva Kultursenter International Residency where I researched ink drawing in and onto land ice. in 2022 Glasgow Museums (Glasgow Life) purchased my Downie/Eardley completion painting Four Children 1962-2022, supported by the Eardley Foundation. As a mid-career artist I established Birchtree Studios in 2019, which has since become a hub for creative collaborations both locally and internationally.
EDUCATION
1983-84 Scottish Arts Council Amsterdam Studio Residency/Reitvelt Kunst Akademie printmaking
1979-80 Postgraduate studies in Fine Art (Distinction)
1975-79. Diploma in Drawing and Painting at Grays School of Art (High Commend)
“Ever since living in Paris in the late 80’s, I have been exploring the concept of ‘La Place’: a point in the land where many roads meet. One of my creative concerns is to define these spaces between in both urban and rural settings. The object lesson for me is the witnessing and the drawing of these non-places which are also, by definition, public arenas of cumulative activity. My job as an artist is to accommodate these actions in our contemporary lives, and to find the poetry within.”
Kate Downie was born in North Carolina but raised from the age of 7 in Scotland. She studied at Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen before travel and residencies took her to the United States, The Netherlands, France, Japan and Norway.
As a Landscape painter/printmaker she studies the relationship of the human co-existence/dissonance within nature, often defined by good draughtsmanship and a sense of movement. Downie has established studios in places as diverse as a brewery, a maternity hospital, an oil rig and an island underneath the Forth Rail Bridge. She has taught both in art colleges and universities and has directed major public and community art projects since 1987.
As President to the Society of Scottish Artist from 2004 to 2006, Downie co-curated contemporary visual art projects of international standing, including an exchange exhibition with Indian artists and the Bodyparts live art Festival at the RSA in Edinburgh. Her work appears in many public and corporate collections including the BBC; Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art; Gracefield Art Gallery, Dumfries; Aberdeen Art Gallery; Rietveld Kunst Academie, Amsterdam; City of Edinburgh Council; HM The King; Kelvingrove Art Gallery, Glasgow & New Hall College Art Collection in Cambridge. In 2005 the artist was shortlisted for the Jerwood Drawing Prize, and in 2008 became a member of the Royal Scottish Academy.
Like the Scottish Artists Joan Eardley and DY Cameron in the last century, Downie has spent the past 30 years exploring an artistic vision for both the extremes of a Scottish urban/industrial landscape as well as Scotland’s coastal ‘edge-scapes’ beyond the cities. Downie re-located to Fife in 2018, establishing Birchtree Studios in 2019, which has since become a hub for creative collaborations both locally and internationally.
March 2023