The Listening Sea

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1st – Saturday 29th February            

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An exhibition of paintings by Kate Bell

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Kate Bell's creative practice has taken her on a journey exploring the nature of place as a fluid human experience, which is felt, perceived, evoked and remembered. It stems from a fascination for the spiritual connection between the sea and land, both natural and mythological.

The coastal landscape is a place of memories, mystery and imagination.

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Kate is intrigued by what’s left behind, tracing and mapping the intangible, through exploration of the boundaries between land, sea and sky. Anomalies in the land and seascapes harbour portals into other worlds. We see traces on the land in the form of cracks, crevices, fissures’, alignment of stones, sea caves and shorelines.

Focus is placed on these ‘Thin Places’. They appear as movement of the sea on the land and where humans leave their mark, in the form of shipping lanes, buoys, navigational markers and lost vessels.

From the calmest of days to treacherous winter storms there is an ever changing ‘sea music’, a continual dialogue between real geographies and the imagery in my work. There is an ever-immersive relationship between painting, music and poetry. Some paintings have been inspired by Vernon Watkins’ metaphysical poetry in combination with the archaeological history around the ancient Gower Coast.

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Her paintings, continually question the boundary between representation and pure abstraction, expanding the notion of how land and seascape are explored.