Kate Atkin (1981 – )
Kate Atkin was born in 1981 in Odstock, Wiltshire. Whilst studying for an MA in photography at the Royal College of Art, London (2003-05), she began to explore new ways of expressing her interest in the exotic and incongruous. Often using natural forms such as roots, rocks and flowers, her work presents familiar forms in a new state of isolation removed from their surroundings to appear as microscopic-like floating islands.
Atkin describes the process behind her early drawings as an epiphany, releasing her from the photographic medium. She now uses photography more as a documentary tool to start her work. From different positions, she takes photos of her selected subjects at curious angles, using these initial images as sketches to work from on a much larger scale. Atkin imagines when a drawing might be fully finished and stops work a day before, leaving an unresolved quality which allows the image to breathe. She lives and works in London.
About her work, Atkin says: "My drawings are large, mostly in black and white, and very labour-intensive. I spend a lot of time working up-close and then walking as far away from it as possible to see it at a distance. Close-up, a lot of my work is teeming and chaotic. From a distance it has a sort of geography.
Glossary
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Drawing
The depiction of shapes and forms on a flat surface chiefly by means of lines although colour and shading may also be included. Materials most commonly used are pencil, ink, crayon, charcoal, chalk and pastel, although other materials, including paint, can be used in combination.
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Medium
Refers to either the material used to create a work of art, craft or design, i.e. oil, bronze, earthenware, silk; or the technique employed i.e. collage, etching, carving. In painting the medium refers to the binder for the pigment, e.g. oil, egg, acrylic dispersion. The plural form is media.