About the Artist
Katharine White, born in Central Hawke's Bay, has painted and drawn since she was a small child. Brought up in a relatively bohemian household, the creation of art was as normal as brushing teeth, making bread or sitting up till the early hours of the morning discussing philosophy and politics over homemade apricot liqueur.
Her qualifications include a New Zealand Certificate of Craft Design, gleaned from the early days of the Arts at the Hawke's Bay Polytech, and a Diploma of Art and Creativity (Hons) from The Learning Connexion in Wellington.
Katharine's first venture into the world of art sales was in the form of animal portraiture in the mid 1980s, working mainly in chalk pastel, and achieving growing success as she took this skill with her on overseas travels, receiving commissions from cat, dog, horse and stud cattle owners in Australia, Jersey, England and Scotland. She lived in Ireland for four years where, along with animal portraits she illustrated book and magazine covers for publishing houses and was inspired immensely by the more pagan aspects of her Celtic heritage.
Returning to New Zealand in the mid 1990s Katharine has spent the last ten years working in disciplines ranging from illustration, portraiture, environmental art, chalk boards, and has developed to a strong degree her Works from the Imagination having shown four successful solo exhibitions. She now lives in her beloved Central Hawke's Bay with her family and animals, tutoring art part time with The Learning Connexion, painting portraits of animals and people and working on her fifth collection of Works from the Imagination.
Katharine works in a variety of media including oils, acrylics, chalk pastel, charcoal and high-build texture medium. Her more classical portraits of animals and people tend to be executed in pastels or oils. She draws from a deep passion for Nature and from the World of Mythology in her fine art and has been classed as a Surrealist in style. Her paintings and drawings contain levels of meaning from the obvious to the very subtle and her work has been credited by many of her patrons with an uncanny ability to grow and continue to grow over the years, on the sensibilities of its viewers.
"The creation of Art isn't a choice in the end, It chooses you, to accompany It on a voyage with no final destination in mind. Each painting, each image, is but a brief landing on an island on that journey, the brushstrokes your footprints."
