Katie Mawson

Over the past couple of years Katie has been collecting vintage cloth bound books from local charity shops, she uses the cloth from these books as both her palette and canvas. The array of colours is infinite, many of them faded and marked through time . . . they all have a former life and story.

She slices, cuts, rips and skins these beautifully marked and faded cloths from their boards; this is all part of the making process . . . deconstructing to then reconstruct into something new.

Katie spends hours arranging and rearranging shapes and colours, often starting with one idea which evolves into something else along the way. She likes this fluidity, for her it is all about colour balance, positive and negative spaces and creating a sense of tranquillity.

Katie lives in the Lake District and wild swims at sunrise throughout the year; the quietness and calmness of these swims, along with the changes in weather and seasons, inform her work as does the ageing process within more urban environments; she likes to juxtapose the beauty of urban decay and dereliction with the purity of nature.

Katie graduated from Camberwell Art School with a degree in textile design.