After training as a sculptor and theatre designer, since 1999 Kate Bentley has been a full-time painter, mounting numerous solo shows throughout the Scotland and the UK, showcasing a unique style. Her exhibition at Morningside Gallery, Kimono Journeys combines her interest in traditional kimonos as works of art, and her interest in the human form, pattern and texture.

Based in South-West Scotland, Kate is influenced greatly by location and landscape – a ‘painter of life,’ painting en plein air and from life to suggest a narrative. She works-over existing studies in her studio, experimenting and achieving her characteristic strong contrasting colours by building-up paint layers which she scrapes or sands back, revealing its underneath and repeating the process.

Last year Kate won the Hosking House Trust Prize the 6th Annual Women’s Emerging Artist Painting Award and the Sea Pictures Gallery Award at the Royal Society of Marine Painters’ Annual Exhibition, and was awarded membership to the Royal Society of Painters in Watercolours (RI).

The exhibition is being shown alongside a showing of ten new seascape paintings by Beth Robertson Fiddes, exploring the unique tidal light of the west coast where she lives and works.