Kathy Robertson

My art explores how we perceive and piece together reality, mixing early memories with a broader look at human experience. Watching my father make things by hand was how I first learned to navigate the world. That tactile connection still ties my studio work directly to intuition and memory.

Later on, living in different countries showed me that reality shifts completely depending on the cultural or linguistic lens you use. That realization turned into a deep interest in human psychology. Today, I interrogate the idea of the "real" by gathering raw materials and overlooked, everyday objects. I push these items through physical and digital changes, building them into strange hybrid forms that feel weirdly familiar yet entirely alien.

My paintings rework traditional still-life, using intense, artificial colours to snap ordinary objects out of daily life. I place them in confusing, illogical spaces to capture a strange tension between presence and nothingness. Even my titles, inspired by experimental writers like Gertrude Stein and Samuel Beckett, push back against the idea that language can perfectly describe our world. Ultimately, I want to show that reality isn't just something we find out there—it's something we actively make.

I was born and lived in Greece until my early twenties but have since been travelling and lived in the Middle East and around the UK.