Kate
Batchelor
I
paint the coastal scenes of my native East Anglia.
Originally I trained as a Wildlife Illustrator at Dyfed College of Art,
South West Wales and for many years I worked as a freelance illustrator
but was eventually seduced by the lure of painting. Acrylics
have
provided me with a pathway to express the beauty of the coast, my ties
to it and the kick I get out of painting it.
Currently
my work is based on boats and in particular the more traditionally
built fishing boats. My heritage comes from a
fishing and
farming background, so painting the subjects I paint gives me a strong
connexion to my past. When I look at the fishing
boats that
I paint they make me feel as though I could be standing on the beach or
in the harbour in the early 1900’s. The
boats are
timeless as is fishing, using the same traditional methods with the aid
of a few new additions to their kit.
In my pictures you will
often
see Gulls, when I was a child my father would get me to look up to the
sky and show me the beauty of them flying overhead, the ease in which
they flew seemingly so effortlessly and to me they are also an
intrinsic part of coastal life.