Kate Beatty
Swan and Cygnet $4,500 Status: Available
‘Two Owls on Top’ By Kate Beatty $4,500 Status: Available
A Pair of Inquisitive Black Robins $4,500 Status: Available
Kate has completed a degree at Ilam School of Fine Arts with a Major in painting. Before taking on her degree, Kate studied printmaking, sculpture and photography.
Kate’s work explores the hierarchy of image and object through a process that draws on seriality and originality.
Repeated botanic studies form a background while, often, a lone native bird is depicted. The patterning effect works to devalue the botanical image; it becomes design, wallpaper-esque, whereas the depicted native birds stand by themselves. A whitewash is applied over the surface, simultaneously pulling some of the botanical images into the mid and foreground. In doing this, the background almost acquires a status of subject as the native birds fall between the fore and mid-ground. The combined result is uncanny; nothing seems quite as it should.
The concept behind this series of work draws on establishing a connection of Kate’s heritage as a New Zealand European.