Artist Biography
Kate Bowen is a painter and printmaker based in Suffolk, near the Essex border. Driven by a deep curiosity and a love of colour, light and shadow, her work moves between expansive landscapes and intricate, jewel-like details.
She studied on the Foundation Course at St Albans School of Art before completing a BA in Fine Art at Gloucestershire College of Art and Design. Following her degree, she trained and worked with Paul Mitchell Conservation of Paintings in New Bond Street, London, while continuing her studies in life drawing at the Royal Academy and other institutions.
After spending almost a decade living in India and Myanmar, Bowen returned to the UK, where she has immersed herself in the landscapes that inspired both John Constable and Thomas Gainsborough. She now creates new work from her Suffolk base and explores printmaking at the Gainsborough's House Printroom. A member of Colchester Art Society, she regularly works en plein air along the River Stour and the Suffolk coast, where the atmospheric landscape of Orford Ness is a continual source of fascination.
In Myanmar, Bowen spent fourteen months researching and working with a mangrove reforestation project in the Irrawaddy Delta. This experience resulted in a series of large-scale paintings and an installation exhibited in Yangon. She also helped to develop projects and deliver workshops for the Myanmar Arts Social Project.
While living in India, she volunteered with the Centre for New Perspectives in New Delhi.
Her work is held in private collections throughout the USA, Europe, South Asia and Southeast Asia.
Artist Statement
My work explores the atmosphere that connects the intimate and the immense within the landscape. I am fascinated by the relationship between close observation and wider space, often moving between detailed studies and broader, more immersive views.
Experimentation is central to my practice. I enjoy working with different materials and surfaces and frequently create my own pigments by grinding found stones and organic matter. Observational drawing is often the starting point, providing a way into a subject before developing it further through paint and print.
Whether working rapidly and intuitively wet-on-wet (alla prima) or building a painting through a slower, more considered process, my aim is to create an emotional connection with the landscape and a sense of being present within it.
Current projects include a series exploring the River Stour and its water meadows, alongside paintings of the East Coast landscape around Orford Ness.
More recently, periods of drought have inspired a series focused on drought-resistant gardens. Beginning with my own gravel garden, the work has expanded to include studies of Cedric Morris's garden at Benton End and the hidden garden of John Nash and Ronald Blythe at Bottengoms Hall in Essex.