Kate Downie RSA is an American-born British landscape artist whose career over the past 30 years has spanned the media of painting, drawing, printmaking, performance and film. Teaching, communal art making and curating are intrinsic to her practice. Downie's work responds to subjects as diverse as North Sea oil platforms, breweries, hospitals and bridge construction.
In 2010 Downie won the RSA William Gillies Bequest Award to travel to Beijing and Shanghai to work with ink painting masters. Following on from this experience, in 2011 Downie won a position on the Red Gate Residency programme, allowing her to return to China and develop her research. In 2013 the new methodologies and techniques that Downie discovered in China resulted in the exhibition Walk through Resonant Landscape, mounted by the RSA in conjunction with the Royal Glasgow Institute Kelly Gallery.
In 2014 Downie was the Artist in Residence for the 50th anniversary celebrations of the Forth Road Bridge. More recently, the new Queensferry Crossing has become a key subject in her work. Having recently relocated her studio from Edinburgh to Fife, Downie's work is increasingly looking to the landscape of the east coast of Scotland. Downie has won numerous awards and residencies throughout her career and her work appears in public and private collections worldwide.
