KATE BRINKWORTH

Kate Brinkworth is a British artist known for her vibrant and seductive paintings that often depict dice, cocktails, and film stills. Based in central England, she has been active since graduating in 2000. Her work explores the allure of colour and light, the seductive appeal of vice, and the hypnotic language of film.

Kate Brinkworth has long been captivated by storytelling and harbours a profound affection for cinema, which marries the two elements she thrives on: imagery and narrative.

During her university years, she delved into the construction of films, questioning how images coalesce to form a cohesive plot and which elements or scenes are pivotal. She pondered the roles of colour, light, shadow, camera angle, focus, objects, and location in captivating the imagination, allowing the viewer to grasp the esse nce of an idea and contribute to the viewing experience

Kate originally used film scenes to explore this but soon desired to craft her own images. She gathered intriguing items—dice, insects, cameras, letters, papers—to support this pursuit. She arranged small still lifes, played with lighting, adjusted focus to highlight certain aspects, and then captured these arrangements in paintings.

As Brinkworth embraced the challenge of photorealism and converting light into paint, she enjoyed the qualities of pigments and the opportunity to add more detail to a painting than a photo could show. She experimented with intense colours and light to enhance and play around with. The oversaturated colour of the chosen objects reflected the nature of their temptation and their glossy, sleek appeal. The dice opened up questions of fate, chance, and the curveball effect, and perhaps these objects drew her to them becoming symbols of forces larger than themselves. Working with an accomplished hand and a precise technique, Brinkworth skilfully deceives our perception in each of her playful scenes and creates a rich narrative behind each piece.