Blue on gold

Our family had the classic Australian pet of blue and green budgies when I was a child. Despite being small and ubiquitous they are gorgeous little parrots and I thought they deserved a bit of a spotlight. The bird is rendered in watercolour and ink and sits on a randomly textured, almost aged-looking gold background, to elevate the humble budgie to a regal subject.

This piece glows at night, and the gold catches the light from all angles.

The piece is signed on the front and signed and dated on the back. The image is 22.8cm x 28.2cm and the paper is 28cm x 38.5cm, allowing a large white surround if required.

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Hi there, I’m Kate. Thanks for looking at my art!

I am a largely self taught hobby artist, working mainly in watercolour, pen and ink and graphite. I don’t have any formal fine art training, but brief study of interior and industrial design grounded me in the fundamentals of highly detailed representational work. Despite my love of the finer details I am trying to find a looser, more emotive style, veering toward semi-abstract.

I enjoy learning the properties and limits of an often unpredictable medium like watercolour, because it’s equally frustrating and satisfying. Sometimes when you think watercolour has gone very badly wrong it turns out so right! This is why you’ll find chaotic experimentation and controlled detail contrasted in my work.

I don’t have a particular narrative I’m trying to deliver: I’m a dilettante mainly driven by the aesthetic, especially that of the natural world. I find inspiration in random places, from magazines to photography, to hikes in the bush and doing my own never-ending gardening, to graphic design. I work from my own reference photographs and stock photography.