Katie Mawson

​​​

Abstract aesthetic 2025

​

Katie is a collage artist coming from a textile background. She works with the cloth from discarded, damaged hard back books from local charity shops, she uses the cloth from these books as both her Palette and canvas. The array of colours is infinite, many of them faded and marked through time…they all have a former life and story.

 

She slices, cuts, rips and skins these beautifully marked and faded cloths from their boards; this is all part of the making process…deconstructing to then reconstruct into something new. She adds no colour to the covers, but she sometimes experiments with mark making and removing colour, creating lines and texture.

 

Katie spends hours arranging and rearranging shapes and colours, often starting with one idea which evolves into something else along the way. She likes this fluidity, for her it is all about colour balance, positive and negative spaces and creating a sense of peace.

 

During the process of making there are so many different emotions going on, it can be exciting, daunting, frustrating, hopeless…all of these feelings along the way; then, when she thinks something is ‘finished’ there will be a brief feeling of satisfaction before her critical eye comes in again. This is where she stops, there is a danger at this point to over work the piece, less is always more in her opinion.

 

She lives in the Lake District and wild swims at sunrise throughout the year; the quietness and calmness of these swims, along with the changes in weather and seasons, inform her work as does the aging process within more urban environments; she likes to juxtapose the beauty of urban decay and dereliction with the purity of nature.

​

Click images for details and if you are interested in any of Katie Mawson's work please enquire below.​​​​​​​​