Katie’s work focusses on flowers growing in situ; it is somewhere between photo- and hyperrealism, being descriptive and alive, with an emotional basis.

The floral subjects are taken from mobile phone photographs so as to capture a stolen moment that is un-staged and depicts nature and the environment exactly as it was at that time.

The acrylic paintings range in scale from the small and intricate, which can take hours to render, to exploring larger pieces with less intricacy. But both require focus and embody femininity and layers of complex thought.

The artist has an instinctive approach to colour theory, seeing in terms of hues, tones and saturation with surface and shape described using flat colour rather than paint with a physical texture.

Preferring  to work on canvas, her compositions are intended to be hung without frames as she likes the rawness and imperfection of canvas and wood to emphasize that what the viewer is looking at is consciously a painting and not just a realistic depiction .

At present  the artist has diversified from being particularly drawn to peonies and short-lived blooms, which encapsulate  the concept of the beguiling brevity of life, to exploring dying flowers and the colours and texture that are created as they fade. This sees her considering the issues of ageing, beauty, human flaws and mental illnesses through images of gradual floral decomposition.

The introduction of gold to highlight the decaying parts of flowers is based in the artist’s interest in the Japanese art of kintsugi or kintsukuroi, ” …putting broken pottery back together with gold- a metaphor for embracing your flaws and imperfections” -Candice Kumai, and wabi-sabi “{which} celebrates cracks and crevices and rot and all the other marks that time and weather use leave behind” – Robyn Griggs-Lawrence.

Future works will see both floral glory and exploration of the concepts of decrepitude and imperfection.