16 artistFebruary 2021 http://www.painters-online.co.ukIN CONVERSATION
K
ate Newington always wanted
to be a figurative artist. ‘At
Camberwell School of Art I
studied sculpture initially,
because I liked the big white spaces
of the sculpture studios and there
was so much opportunity to do life
drawing and work from the figure in that
department. I later moved on to solely
working in 2D – that was always where
my heart was. Much later on I did an
MA part-time in Communication Design
(Illustration) at St Martin’s School of Art,
which I absolutely loved.‘Collage portraits
‘For the last 20 years I have been
getting regular collage portrait
commissions. These portraits takeExpressed with
collage
Susie Hodge talks to Kate Newington, winner of The Artist Award in
last year’s Society of Women Artists’ exhibition
a long time to make as they are
completely built up from tiny scraps
of paper. I love making them, but it’s
important that I also make other work
that’s more personal; in fact, more
recently, this is where the focus of
my work has been. I make still lifes
(often with a collage element) and
am in the middle of a series of larger
paintings that are about memories
and associations, mostly to do with
childhood.
‘My use of collage goes back a long
way. In my mid-teens I discovered
the Cubists and really fell in love
with the work of Juan Gris, who used
a combination of oil paint and paper
collage in his still lifes – as did Picasso.
Something about these mixed-mediaCubist still lifes from between 1910
and 1920 really appealed to me and
I started to use torn pieces from
magazines and newspapers in my own
portraits and still lifes.
‘At art school and for a number of
years after that I worked mainly in
oils and only came back to collage in
my early 40s. I think it is the instant
“design” and graphic elements of
collage that appeal to me. The edges
of a piece of paper and the contrasting
printed textures, patterns and words
immediately give a composition a kind
of 3D feel – a life beyond the merely
representational and the 2D. So I work
with paper collage, mixed media and
acrylic paint. I use Golden acrylics
because they’re thick and lustrous
and the most like oil paint of all the
acrylics I have tried, but without any
of the hassle. It’s water-based, dries
quickly (which I like) and can be mixed,
scraped off, used thickly or thinly and
manipulated and looks, to my mind,
just like oil paint.’Preparation and references
‘If I’m making a collage portrait, I meet
the subject and, if they’re children, their
parents, to get to know them as much
as I can. I take reference photos of them
in different kinds of light. I always look
for ways to place the subject in a warm,t Fly Two Birds, collage on canvas,
173/4 3 173/4in (45 3 45cm).
‘This is a drawing/collage/painting of my
blue-and-white jug and a bunch of tulips.
I painted the background colour first and
experimented with glue and sand to give the
impression of a beach. I very much enjoyed
rendering the flowers in collage – the crisp
edges of the paper pieces bring a graphic
element to the painting. In St Ives I was
constantly aware of the blue of the sky, the
sand, the wind and the gulls. I added the gulls
in the top left as I felt the composition needed
something in that area.’TA02_p16_19_In Conversation.inddTA02_p16_19_In Conversation.indd 16 16 07/12/2020 15:3907/12/2020 15: