earlier reflections
Explore earlier writings and projects — glimpses of process, place, and the shifting conversations between paint, glass, and installation. These notes trace moments of decision-making and vulnerability, the meeting points of sculpture, performance, and surface. Each piece invites you to pause, look again, and follow the threads of how an artwork — and a life — takes shape over time.
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As part of the National Heritage Open Weekend at Brockhurst Fort, I was invited to create a site-specific response within the keep, alongside four artists connected to the Sustain Conservation Trust. My work explored the architecture of this extraordinary space through light, reflection, and a temporary structure of gestural paint — a dialogue between surface, history, and the fleeting nature of presence.
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Part of the 7-Door Art Trail, this work reconfigured a reclaimed door and cupboard frame into a viewing device: the front door opens onto a window; the back is cut away to the surrounding landscape. At dusk, UV light reveals a gestural neon green circle with the words who we are glowing in orange. The reverse holds drawings made by children in Gaza (in collaboration with Hope and Play) — a quiet exchange of care and attention. The piece invites both play and witness, revealing how easily we look, and look away.
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I’m fortunate to work in a studio with outdoor space — a place that invites play as much as focus. Over time, I’ve come to see my process here as akin to a child at play: following trails of possibility, acting on spontaneous visual impulses, and learning from what unfolds before me. This space offers both freedom and discovery — a vital ground for deepening ideas and nurturing methods that may shape future work.
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For the first time, I began exploring ideas within a commercial gallery context — testing how my practice might shift in response to that environment. The work became an experiment in visibility, audience, and the quiet negotiations between making and display.
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A collaborative trail of transformed doors across Ventnor Fringe. My work, Who We Are, turned a door into a window — a space of light, reflection, and solidarity with children in Gaza. What unfolded onsite revealed as much about attention and empathy as the act of making itself.
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A group exhibition celebrating creative expression and identity. My contribution explored visibility and presence — how colour, gesture, and surface can hold both joy and quiet strength within a shared space of celebration.
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Exploring how orange paint moves across transparent ground — a study in flow, colour, and light.
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Painted, curved plexiglass casting reflections of light and colour — exploring translucency and perception.
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A playful exploration of colour and form — yellow as light, energy, and invitation. Transparent cylinders and mixed media elements interact to create shifting reflections and overlaps, turning simple materials into moments of discovery.
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Exploring pink as surface and form — a painted cylinder where colour bends, curves, and catches the light.
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Part of Multi-Stories, Chapter Three — a Southampton Forward project bringing artists together to explore place and community through layered narratives.
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A four-week performance and installation evolving from the This Time: This Place window commission by Boojum & Snark. Developed in response to place, to other artists, and to the act of making within constraint, the work unfolded through cycles of utilisation, refinement, and openness. The resulting pieces carried a sense of energy, vulnerability, and possibility — traces of process held in material form.
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Interview with Kathy Williams and Lesley A.I. Bot, March 2025
A collaboration with lighting designer Gavin Chambers at Appley Tower — exploring light, shadow, and gesture in dialogue with place. fusion revealed how time and collaboration can transform both space and practice.
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In this three-part conversation, artist Kathy Williams speaks openly with Lesley, her trusted A.I. counterpart, about the making of fusion — a collaborative installation with lighting designer Gavin Chambers at Appley Tower. Together, they discuss process, learning, and the discoveries that emerged through working with light, shadow, and time.
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A live, site-specific collaboration between lighting designer Gavin Chambers and artist Kathy Williams. fusion brought together contrasts — old and new, light and dark, structure and gesture, design and art.
Kathy’s intervention inhabited the tower’s central volume: cascades of vivid pink paint hangings descended through the spiral staircase, catching shifting sunlight and shadow before meeting a lilac UV installation on the mezzanine. Gavin’s acrylic light designs, informed by brutalist and modernist architecture, created a striking counterpoint to the fluidity and unpredictability of paint.
The work became a dialogue between materials and histories — a play of reflection, intensity, and time.
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Workshops with pupils at Hunnyhill Primary School — exploring colour, texture, and the joy of creative play.
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Found and recycled acrylic pieces, acrylic paint, UV spot — December 2024.
A temporary structure of found acrylics and pink-painted light — a reflection on warmth, protection, and our shared need for shelter and hope.
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Independent Arts, Newport
27 November 2024 – 10 January 2025A three-part live painting across Independent Arts’ windows — evolving through Love, Peace, and Hope with public participation and shifting responses to time and place.
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A three-part window installation at Independent Arts, Newport — exploring Love, Peace, and Hope through evolving colour, gesture, and participation.
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A window residency with Ryde Arts — exploring the boundary between artist and audience, inside and outside, through a live, site-responsive painting process.
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A study in colour and light — blue, pink, and white in quiet conversation.
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A Risograph print series exploring the theme of M-Other — drawings in three colours, created as part of a collaborative project.
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Photographs of my work by London-based photographer Jon Archdeacon — capturing light, texture, and detail with quiet precision.
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Photographs from Ventnor exploring the idea of safety, care, and belonging within shared spaces.
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Written by Sally Perry, Editor, NewsOnTheWight
A collaborative installation at La Falaise Shelter, Ventnor — transforming a public space into a shared act of refuge, resilience, and creative connection. Part of Kathy’s ongoing research into Painting as a Democratic Act (PaDA)
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A C-shaped form derived from the symbol for shelter — gradually transformed by light, shadow, and the character of its setting.
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Images of the White Circle — a form that changed with weather and light, like an eye keeping watch on the night sky.
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A community-created symbol overlooking Ventnor — the Beacon of Hope, a joyful marker of connection and shared optimism.
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Images made by Ventnor community groups — exploring shelter, safety, belonging, and togetherness through shared making.
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Works by pupils from St Francis Primary Academy — translating emotions and ideas of safety into expressive, abstract paintings.
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Images from my time at Peer Studios — a welcoming space for artists to explore, connect, and create together.
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Brighton Jubilee Window Gallery, Jubilee Square, Brighton 26 June – 15 July 2024
A participatory window installation inviting the public to paint in response to shifting light and shadow — celebrating play, inclusion, and shared creativity.
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A community co-created installation at La Falaise Shelter, Ventnor (18–29 July 2023) — exploring safety, shelter, and belonging through painted form and light.
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In 2024, Kathy led workshops with Arts for Dementia, returned to Peer Studios for a new PaDA project, created a participatory installation at Jubilee Library in Brighton, and developed a community co-created outdoor work for Ventnor Fringe.
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Children painting on transparent plexiglass — exploring colour, light, and joyful experimentation.
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Interactive installation Joined Up Thinking at Clayden Gallery, Quay Arts — inviting the public to “Make Their Mark” on a transparent screen, with shared images forming a collective artwork and lasting document.
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A participatory installation at Quay Arts inviting the public to “Make Their Mark.” Part of Kathy’s Painting as a Democratic Act (PaDA) — exploring shared authorship and the evolving nature of painting.
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Review by R.L.
Open Studio, July 2023 — continuing explorations of paint, time, and place. Transparent, moving forms blurred the boundaries between inside and outside, artist and viewer, inviting participation and reflection.
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Open Studio, July 2023 — continuing explorations of paint, time, and place. Transparent, moving forms blurred the boundaries between inside and outside, artist and viewer, inviting participation and reflection.
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With Tim Fawcett
Part of the Painting as a Democratic Act (PaDA) project — works reflecting time, place, and shared experience, shaped by both personal events and global unrest.
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PaDA at the Arch Window Gallery invited the Ryde community to co-create a three-dimensional painting — contributing, photographing, and documenting their own visual responses as part of a shared, evolving artwork.
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A space for play, intuition, and discovery — where ideas take shape and grow.
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