Kate Downie studied Fine Art at Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen, including post graduate studies. During her career 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.

Kate Downie describes her work: “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 buildings rather than the buildings themselves. 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.”

Her work is often defined by good draughtsmanship and a sense of movement. Panoramas, unbound by the mere edge of a sheet of paper or canvas, invite the viewer to enter the works, both complex and accessible. 

Like the Scottish Artists Joan Eardley and DY Cameron in the last century, Downie has spent the past 25 years exploring an artistic vision for both the extremes of a Scottish urban/industrial landscape as well as the less pastoral of Scotland’s coastal ‘edge-scapes’ beyond the cities.