{{short description|United States-born Scottish artist|bot=PearBOT 5}} {{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}} {{Infobox artist | name = Kate Downie | birth_date = c. {{birth year and age|1958}} | birth_place = North Carolina<br />United States }} '''Kate Downie''' (born 1958) is a United States-born Scottish artist who works in painting, printmaking and drawing. She is known for her landscape painting, and her works are held by Glasgow's main public galleries.
Downie was born in North Carolina in 1958, to a Scottish father and English mother.<ref name="Forth">{{cite news|url=http://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/life-style/how-kate-downie-prepared-road-bridge-diaries-1-3511646|title=How Kate Downie prepared Road Bridge Diaries|date=16 August 2014|work=Edinburgh Evening News|accessdate=17 September 2014}}</ref><ref name=Glasgow>{{cite book|editor=Sam Maddra, Joanna Meacock and Lisa Pearson|title=Oil Paintings in Public Ownership in Glasgow Museums|publisher=The Public Catalogue Foundation| location=London|date=2013|isbn=978-1-904931-81-2}}</ref><ref name="SG">{{cite web|url=http://www.scottish-gallery.co.uk/artist/kate_downie|title=Kate Downie RSA, PPSSA|publisher=The Scottish Gallery|accessdate=17 September 2014|archive-date=17 September 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140917160619/http://www.scottish-gallery.co.uk/artist/kate_downie|url-status=dead}}</ref> She came to Scotland with her family when she was seven.<ref name=Forth/> She studied art in Aberdeen, and worked in several countries thereafter, including the United States and Holland, but is based in Edinburgh and known for her works portraying the Scottish landscape.<ref name=SG/> Downie works in a range of media, including oil and acrylic painting, ink painting, collage, and lithography<ref name=Glasgow/><ref name="Edinburgh">{{cite web|url=http://www.edinburghprintmakers.co.uk/artist/kate-downie|title=Kate Downie|publisher=Edinburgh Printmakers|accessdate=17 September 2014|archive-date=17 September 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140917203713/http://www.edinburghprintmakers.co.uk/artist/kate-downie|url-status=dead}}</ref>
From 2004 to 2006, Downie was President of the Society of Scottish Artists. In 2005 she was shortlisted for the Jerwood Drawing Prize.<ref name=Edinburgh/> In the late 2000s, she created Coast Road Diaries, documenting a two-year journey around Scotland; the works formed a travelling exhibition that was critically acclaimed.<ref>{{cite news|url=http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/local-news/downie-touring-exhibition-stops-gracefield-2598265|title=Downie touring exhibition stops off at Gracefield|date=15 January 2010|work=Daily Record and Sunday Mail|accessdate=17 September 2014}}</ref><ref name=China/>
A member of the Royal Scottish Academy, in 2010 she travelled to China to study ink painting, returning in 2011 and again in 2013. Works resulting from these residencies were displayed at the Royal Scottish Academy and at the Royal Glasgow Institute's Kelly Gallery.<ref name=China>{{cite news|url=http://www.heraldscotland.com/arts-ents/visual/kate-downies-visions-of-china.1378522807|title=Kate Downie's visions of China|last=Patience|first=Jan|date=7 September 2013|work=heraldscotland|accessdate=17 September 2014}}</ref><ref name="RSA">{{cite web|url=http://royalscottishacademy.org/pages/exhibition_frame.asp?id=411|title=Kate Downie RSA|date=2013|publisher=The Royal Scottish Academy|accessdate=17 September 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131106035423/http://www.royalscottishacademy.org/pages/exhibition_frame.asp?id=411|archive-date=6 November 2013|url-status=dead}}</ref> In 2014, Downie was commissioned as an artist-in-residence at the Forth Road Bridge, to create an exhibition and work to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the bridge's construction.<ref name=Forth/> She described her role as conducting "an in-depth interview" with the structure, in order to gather the information and ideas to inform her work. She also climbed to the top of the structure, and spent two months working in an improvised studio directly under the bridge.<ref name=Forth/>
Described by journalist Jan Patience as "sure, deft and fearless",<ref name=China/> examples of Downie's art are held in the Glasgow Museums, including figurative works, such as ''12 Minute Baby'' (1993) and urban landscapes such as ''Blue Night, Yellow Roof'' (1991).<ref name=Glasgow/>
In late September 2014 Downie set off for 3 months of travel in Australia and Japan, carrying out research of river systems, estuaries and bridges on the edge of the western Pacific Ocean. This culminated in a 2nd major solo exhibition with the Scottish Gallery ''Estuary'' in Edinburgh in April 2015. That same month also featured a two-person show ‘Drawing on the Landscape’ at Cobalt Contemporary in Pittenweem. Both shows were reviewed by the Times, The Scotsman and Studio International.<ref>{{Cite web|last=McKENZIE|first=Janet|title=Kate Downie and Susan Winton: Drawing on the landscape|url=https://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/kate-downie-susan-winton-interview-scotland-landscape-painting|access-date=2020-09-04|website=Studio International - Visual Arts, Design and Architecture|language=en-gb}}</ref>
==References== {{Reflist}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Downie, Kate}} Category:1958 births Category:Living people Category:20th-century Scottish painters Category:21st-century Scottish painters Category:20th-century Scottish women artists Category:21st-century Scottish women artists Category:Presidents of the Society of Scottish Artists Category:Royal Scottish Academicians Category:Scottish women painters Category:20th-century women painters Category:21st-century American women painters Category:21st-century American painters Category:21st-century British women painters