Kate Downie Print Launch

Kate Downie, Hear the Wind Blow, stone lithograph, 2025.

Artworks
Kate Downie
Hear the Wind Blow, 2025
Edinburgh Printmakers is delighted to present a new limited edition stone lithograph by renowned artist and printmaker Kate Downie.

This new lithograph, created in collaboration with Edinburgh Printmakers Head of Editions Alastair Clark in our print studio, is based on a watercolour sketch Kate produced of the coastal edge of Fife at Tentsmuir. With this print and its broad, expressive marks, she hopes it communicates some of the sensations she sought to capture: feeling close to nature and the joy of a beach walk in a place of such vivacity and beauty.

Kate Downie has worked extensively in printmaking since the late 1980s, regularly working with Edinburgh Printmakers. Downie's draftsmanship is exemplary, and has a strong sense of movement. Her subject matter is the panorama, often alluding to the continuation of image beyond the boundaries of the image-plane.
"This lithograph is based upon a place I love to walk with friends and family, at the coastal edge of Fife, where I made a watercolour sketch on January 8th 2023. Tentsmuir reaches to a beach that however busy it is with people and dogs is busier still with seabirds and seals, dolphin, and fish in the estuarine waters. Yet it retains the capacity to feel exhilaratingly empty and spacious."

"As I sat drawing on a low dune I was buffeted by the winter winds. They whistled through the pine trees at my back, bent the marram grass around me, whipped up the surf to catch the light, making the waves pound the wet sand of the shore. Below my feet tidal pools reflecting the sky rippled and flattened. This concerto of senses was intermittently illuminated by a sharp low winter sun revealing the shifting panorama."
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"Alastair Clark and I agreed that this atmospheric sketch could translate into a print with some magic made upon the lithographic stone slabs. I was struck by how the wide expanse of smooth ground limestone prior to mark making echoed the open beach after the tide has swept it clean.

"Alastair’s expertise and vision were essential as I was somewhat out of practice with my mark making on stone in greasy pencil & tusche, but as we have collaborated on four previous print co-publications since 1999 we were soon able to re-engage with our collective endeavour.

"Although the title of the work gives expression to these shoreline winds it is also a musical phrase from a much-loved 20th century folk song from my childhood as sung by Pete Seeger (and my Dad) that rang through my mind as I drew on the stones."
KATE DOWNIE

BIOGRAPHY

Kate Downie has worked extensively in printmaking since the late 1980s, regularly working with Edinburgh Printmakers. Her work appeared in the exhibition New Commisions, 2019 and 40 Years at EP 67-87 in 2007. Downie produced a stunning edition of cyanotypes to support Edinburgh Printmakers' fundraising drive to launch Castle Mills.

Kate Downie's work explores the concept of ‘La Place’: a point in the land where many roads meet. Her intention is to define these spaces between buildings, areas which she sees as essential to the cultural arena. She finds significance in "non-places", depicted in both urban landscapes and coastal ‘edge-scapes’.

Downie's draftmanship is exemplery, and has a strong sense of movement. Her subject matter is the panorama, often alluding to the continuation of image beyond the boundaries of the image-plane. Kate Downie was born in America of British parentage, but returned to live in the North East of Scotland at the age of 7. She studied at Gray’s School of Art.

Downie has exhibited in Scotland and showcased work in Denmark, France and America. She was President to the Society of Scottish Artist from 2004 to 2006. Downie has established studios in unusual public spaces, including a brewery, a maternity hospital, an oil rig and an island underneath the Forth Rail Bridge. She has taught in art colleges and universities, and has directed major public and community art projects since 1987.

Downie's work appears in many public and corporate collections including the BBC; Adam & Co; GoMA, Glasgow; Gracefield Art Gallery, Dumfries; Aberdeen Art Gallery; Rietveld Kunst Academie, Amsterdam; City of Edinburgh Council; HM The Queen; Kelvingrove Art Gallery, Glasgow & New Hall College Art Collection, Cambridge. In 2005 Kate Downie was shortlisted for the Jerwood Drawing Prize, and became a member of the Royal Scottish Academy in 2008.