Dean Clough, feedback from York…

I had some very lovely and generous feedback from people who attended the talk I gave at ICE in York. I began my talk by reading from Ursula LeGuin’s poem ‘The Artist’ – about going to the ‘gap’, the space between…. which is what I feel I do when I make work. I called my Powerpoint ‘The Body as Sensing Organ’ which refers to what I discovered about my body during my residency on Iona last Winter. I also spoke about the poetry of Mallarme and Rilke, both of which help me to understand my work as an artist.

I’m hoping I will be able to give another talk and perhaps a workshop/’hollow bone’ work at Dean Clough at the end of my show’s run there around January 22nd. Here are details of the exhibition:


‘Bird Making Womb for my Consciousness’
Kate Walters: Punctum and Plume
Upstairs Gallery
October 15th 2016 to January 22nd 2017The Guardian’s review of Kate Walter’s 2012 exhibition at Newlyn Art Gallery opened with the line: “It’s not every day you find an artist who claims their home is in the body of a deer…” and went on to refer to her ‘fusion of cave art, classical mythology and a rainbow-tinted hippy sensibility’. In the exhibition catalogue, Richard Davey was more consanguineous: “Reflecting the ancient tradition of the Sacred Feminine, Walters’ paintings are spaces of nurture, birthing pools in which her insights are embodied”. Among Kate’s many art qualifications she has also received formal training in ‘classical shamanism’. Her packed CV would flatter any ONE soul involved in either international art, mysticism or animal husbandry. She is as likely to be talking on ‘expanding consciousness through the act of drawing’ as she is to be discussing her residency in a bothy on Iona; as liable to be quoting Goethe, Griselda Pollock or (as in the title of this exhibition) Barthes. What you get in the gallery is a pictorial blend of animal, human and natural forms in oils, watercolours and monotypes that look to address a sensibility beyond the eye. Chagall is invariably invoked, but Kate Walters is more accurately part of a tradition locally represented by Ted Hughes or the late Derek Hyatt.