Background
Katherine Cowtan MA (RCA)
Compulsively creative from an early age, Katherine Cowtan achieved a 1st Class Honours degree in textile design at West Surrey College of Art & Design, followed by an MA in Woven Textile Design at the Royal College of Art in London.
After college she worked for 15 years as a freelance woven textile designer, initially producing innovative silk furnishing fabrics at the historic Whitchurch Silk Mill in Hampshire, where mixing of fine coloured yarns to create shot silks appealed to her love of working with colour. Soon she started working with fashion designers for whom she designed bespoke fabrics and scarves, which were commissioned as small scale batch production runs from several British mills. However, as the emphasis of these designs was on texture, she missed working with colour.
After moving to rural Stirlingshire with her family, she was inspired by the local landscape, it’s changing weather and seasons, colours, textures and moods. Looking for a more direct response to her surroundings and freer use of colour than weaving, she turned her focus to painting. It wasn’t long before she started selling her landscape paintings, and has never looked back!
As a lover of the countryside and having trained as a designer her artwork is full of natural colours, light and texture, and her interpretation of landscapes is also a vehicle through which she explores elements of design and composition which interest her, including contrast, connection, relationships and balance, which often relate to and reflect real life.
She was ‘Artist in Residence’ at Culcreuch Castle for several years and is one of the artists listed with Wild at Art, Scotland’s travel company.
After a long break from weaving she has recently re-built her handloom and started designing a new collection of scarves, with the intention of selling them, for the first time using her own label.
She sells work both locally and internationally, and enjoys teaching both painting and weaving locally.