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Katy Papineau is a figurative painter who lives and works in London. She graduated in Philosophy from the University of Bristol in 2014, and completed The Drawing Year at The Royal Drawing School in 2019.
Since graduating she has participated in artist residencies in France and Italy. Katy is part of the faculty at the Royal Drawing School, where her teaching focuses on symbolism, memory and imagination.
Katy's practice encompasses drawing, painting and printmaking. Colour is an essential vehicle through which she conveys emotion and atmosphere, working instinctively in thin layers of paint and pigment. These layers combine to result in a subtle complexity of colour, pattern and texture.
Katy's process involves a wealth of references. Initially guided by a loosely defined area of interest, she begins a body of work by collecting scraps from everyday life, film, literature, folklore and art history. These varied visual inputs combine to form ambiguous narrative paintings that make up Katy's distinctive visual universe.
ARTIST STATEMENT
I am interested in the small dramas of everyday life and the ambiguities that exist within intimate relationships. In these paintings, I explore intimacy as seen by an outsider: fleeting moments glimpsed in social spaces. In pubs, restaurants and cafés, I sketch and take written notes, observing the subtle interactions unfolding between the people around me - snippets of conversation, the colours and quality of light, my impressions of what might be going on between people. I take these fragments back to the studio, using them as prompts for the moments contained in my paintings. In thin layers of oil paint, I use colour to convey experience beyond the visual, mining my memories for emotion, atmosphere, scents and sounds.
As an observer, I am aware that I am only privy to a sliver of the lives of others, their minds ultimately unknowable to me. This uncertainty is echoed in figures viewed from behind, and the recurring motif of windows and frames that offer us a partial view.