Article: Mashtif

"Chalk Artist puts "P" into Passion"
By Jody Hopkinson
The Napier Courier, 16th December, 1999

Kate White is the provocative artist behind the chalk drawings in Napier. Currently she is preparing to complete a 9ft X 6ft mural in chalks of Renoir's "Luncheon of the Boating Party".
"It's going to be a mission. I'll go through hundreds of chalks. When it's completed we're going to frame it and it will look like a painting." The mural will take up a wall in O'Flaherty's bar on Hastings Street, while on another wall are her chalk interpretations of the various beers sold in the pub. The mural should be completed by Christmas.
As well as her art - including her speciality, portraits of pets - Kate works at the Hawke's Bay Museum as an archivist.
Kate rejects in part, people's assertion that she "must have a natural talent".
"I have spent millions of hours learning to draw. Art is like any career - it needs practice. Part of my art is a gift but the rest of it is practice." Her talent, however, is obvious, with the response to her recent exhibition being overwhelmingly positive.
Her exhibition "Mashtif"- drunken speak for imaginative, at the Hawke's Bay Community Arts Centre, has just finished. The paintings from that show are now on display at Ujazi Café on Tennyson Street and in Café Graaz in Dalton Street.
Putting the 'p' into passion, Kate says her show was cathartic...Her "Mashtif" works included a huge angry stallion with a feather between its teeth, which was inspired by "imagine the aggressor stopping in mid-flight to appreciate a fragile aesthetic."
"If I had expressed myself exactly how I wanted, even I couldn't have put them on my walls".
Kate believes the role of an artist is to draw out a reaction to their work.
"Getting a reaction is the purpose of my art. Even if it's derogatory, that is better than the viewer not remembering it at all. If you don't stimulate those who experience your art, you have failed."