Kate Bedell - Irish Watercolour Artist

PRESS RELEASE - NOVEMBER 2005

“Expressions”

An Exhibition of Watercolour Paintings by

Kate Bedell

Irish Watercolour artist Kate Bedell opens her third solo show in Bangalore on 25^th November 2005 at RainTree (Opposite the Windsor Manor Hotel). The theme of the exhibition portrays women from everyday life. The show will run for three days until 27^th November.

Kate Bedell arrived in Bangalore nearly six years ago with husband Gary who works in the IT sector, and two young daughters. Life was very different from what she had previously been used to and ultimately this has had a huge effect on her work as a painter. She has embraced these changes with a passion; eager to absorb the culture, colours and textures of a new world.  In between raising her children and teaching art for a brief period of time at the Canadian International School, she has painted a series of images of Indian women which she presents in this new exhibition “Expressions”. 

“The seeds for “Expressions” started three years ago when I first presented my exhibition “Indian Summer” at Gallery Sumukha in November 2002. The women I painted then had an ethereal, haunting quality which fascinated me. I was very much aware of the fact that being a western woman I was set apart from the women that I painted. I  tried to capture their essence and used the medium of watercolour to heighten this elusive quality. The women appeared as fleeting images, emerging from soft, out-of-focus, watercolour washes. Their ghostlike images gave the impression of moving quickly out of the frame of the painting leaving the viewer not quite sure what he had seen.

In “Expressions” I have further explored the elusive and expressive qualities of women, using body language, especially of hands. The painting technique differs from the last show and is more graphic than before, as I needed to give more detail to the faces and hands. However, despite the graphic style of the images, I feel that I have not lost that ethereal quality and they still retain that mysteriousness that I had captured in my earlier work.  The new paintings portray women in natural environments, often turning away from the viewer. In the painting “Hot Gossip”, the intense expression on the face of the girl who is speaking is met by the reluctant listener whose face is turned away from her. In another painting, “Going Within” the seated woman’s hand completely covers her face as she retreats from life. It’s as if these women are enclosed in their own private worlds.

I find that my work is largely voyeuristic and even after having lived in Bangalore for nearly six years, I am still that western ‘outsider’. Yet there is a quality within these images with which I identify completely; a kind of tacit agreement; that we are all from the same root; the same seed that is essentially of Woman.”

All works copyright Kate Bedell 1985-2008