Kate Boucher uses charcoal to evoke liminal transition zones, skies at dawn and dusk, coasts and mountains in shifting atmospheres of wind and cloudscape. Each of her landscapes is an intense study of a particular mood, not a portrait of one moment or scene, but a response to the essential qualities inherent in a time and place based in many different angles of engagement. These studies arise from a deeply sensitive awareness of the emotional energies evoked by wide open landscapes. The working with soft layers of charcoal, with many stages of rubbing and melding results in a subtle and fluid interplay of form and movement.
It was a privilege to see Kate at work recently when she had a residence at the excellent Fen Ditton Gallery, Cambridgeshire, just a couple of miles walk by the river meadows from my house. I was entranced to see scenes from nearby fields, walked a thousand times and hardly seen, transformed into essentials of light, space and air.
Working with wide open fenland skies was something of a new departure for Kate, but she seemed to respond very quickly to that sense of infinity in the sky with dark earth shades below one’s feet. That being grounded and infinitely expanded at the same time, which is so characteristic of the fens. More often she is based in a Wales, and engages with the boundary zones of coasts and mountain slopes, but similarly with a strong sense of the essential fluidity of these places.
More images and details of exhibitions on her website: KateBoucher.com
Urthona – Buddhism & art 