Kathryn Maple – A Year of Drawings

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Accompanied by a series of prints made from solar plates there is an emphasis on the comfort in the cadence and repetition of ongoing cycles that both anchor and elude us.’ It’s in Forest Hill in south London. It’s not a very inspiring studio because it’s an ex-office building, but I can walk there from my flat, which is really wonderful and it’s got quite a bit of storage space. Kathryn will also show images from ‘A Year of Drawings’, a new book and exhibition for which Kathryn made a new drawing everyday between January and December 2022. The works will be shown at Lyndsey Ingram Gallery, London in March. Maple is the only child of an architect father, who died when she was 11, and a retired shopkeeper mother. She thinks that, if the artistic side came from anywhere, it was from him: “I’ve been sent messages from family and friends saying he’d be so proud.” Although being outdoors is what primarily inspires her, she does enjoy other great painters of nature, such as Turner and his skies, and Van Gogh, particularly his orchard series and his ink drawings. Yet she really doesn’t present doing art as some great predestined thing, crediting instead a teacher who encouraged her at A-levels. After those, she studied printmaking at Brighton University, before getting to the Drawing School in 2013. When I've been out drawing you can see repetitive things, people walking the same routes. If you're static and people and cars are moving around you, you can notice these moments. I see it very much as form of cataloguing.

The painting is based on two worlds – Uneo park in Tokyo, a verdant oasis of calm away from the city, and the people she sees near her home in Lewisham, south-east London. She describes the painting, measuring 2.2 metres by 2.4 metres, as a “meeting place, an intersection, people seemingly aware of each other, but minds elsewhere … all sharing an open space”. Yes, I think so Ellie. They reflect something of the time or the mood of a place. We live near a graveyard and [her painting] Old Bones reflects the people visiting. It’s an in-between space. Following Liverpool’s move into Tier 3 of the government’s Covid restrictions in October 2020, for the first time in the history of the Prize judging was all done online. High spec cameras, screens, speakers and AV software allowed judges to appreciate the scale, texture and detail of the works in real time. It also enabled a rich dialogue between the judges, a vital and cherished part of the process. Despite the changes an important fundamental of the competition remained in place with all judging done anonymously, allowing the artworks to speak for themselves. The Walker Art Gallery has announced Kathryn Maple the winner of the John Moores Painting Prize 2020 with her vibrant work, The Common.

In an adjoining room is New Works at the Walker, a corresponding display. Together, the shows demonstrate ‘two strands of an ongoing commitment to contemporary collecting and supporting newer artists’, according to Jessie Petheram, Assistant Curator of Fine Art at National Museums Liverpool. The most striking thing about this display of new works is its breadth. Elegant, delicate examples of decorative art by local crafters include ‘Magic Mushrooms’ (2022) by north Wales-based glass artist Verity Pulford, for which the artist used the ‘páte-de-verre’ technique of firing glass grains in the kiln to make a flat shape, and ‘Beech Leaf caddy spoon’ (2022), an enamel-on-silver spoon with a veined leaf by Ruth Ball, who is based in Southport. To the left is a dramatic glazed ­stoneware vase made in 2022 by Attila Olah, who started Altar Pottery in Toxteth in 2018. These items were made through a bequest by the family of Peter Urquhart with the support of the Bluecoat Display Centre, where Urquhart was the Chairman from 2001–18, and demonstrate the work of contemporary crafters. Kathryn Maple, said: “ Under a Hot Sun is my first solo show, it is huge opportunity to show my paintings at the Walker Art Gallery. The Walker has a great permanent collection and I’m in the company of many artists who have inspired my practice.

Congratulations on winning the John Moores Painting Prize. Has winning affected your practice at all? At the Walker there’s been a decent history of LGBTQI+ art – for example the Coming Outexhibition in 2017. But that was temporary, whereas this shows permanent additions. These artworks are in the collection along with works people know the Walker for, such as the Pre-Raphaelites. We’re putting our money where our mouth is – literally sometimes – when we’re buying work to add to the collection, to show we rate it as important as historical works.’ Petheram explains the process behind choosing which works to show. The curators drew from a list of seventy artworks that the gallery had acquired in the last ten years. They prioritised works that had not yet been exhibited – in some cases, five or six years had passed since their acquisition: This exhibition both in subject matter and in organisation challenges the concept and mechanisms of how museum’s work. It asks the question ‘why if museums are for everyone is it only a select group of people who choose what is collected and displayed?’ As part of the prize, Walker Art Gallery will also host a solo exhibition of your work next year. How do you think people will feel about returning to physical art spaces again?The 2020 jury represent a diverse group of artists and creative influencers: Hurvin Anderson; Michelle Williams Gamaker; Alison Goldfrapp; Jennifer Higgie and Gu Wenda. Fascinatingly the works included were either created specifically for the exhibition, or are off casts from each artist’s own archive. The results have ended up encompassing a wide range of media, technical experience and conceptual approaches. It is an exhibition that reminds one of the diversity of work artists produce, as well as the subtle connections that emerge from artists who are working in the same time period.

Kathryn Maple’s Under a Hot Sun opens on 13 February 2023 and runs until 30 April 2023. For more information, visit: www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/ kathrynmaple. Focussing on the extreme environmental situation the world is currently facing, Kathryn’s exhibition Under a Hot Sun is a collection of work created following the artist’s success in the painting prize.Kathryn Maple’s Under a Hot Sun opens on 13 February 2023 and runs until 30 April 2023. For more information, visit: www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/kathrynmaple. Winning first prize in 2020 with ‘The Common’, now part of the gallery’s permanent collection, Kathryn is the second John Moores Painting Prize winner to be given the opportunity to present work in a solo exhibition at the Walker Art Gallery. The artist’s recognisable style is based on mark-making and innovative ways of creating planes of colour with small marks. Figures melt into their surroundings and landscapes become awash with glimmering tones ranging from bright fresh greens to muted browns. 2020 John Moores Painting Prize winner Kathryn Maple

The Martin Tinney Gallery, which was established in 1992, specialises in the work of Welsh and Wales-based artists and sells to both individuals and large public galleries. Their Winter Show is one of the most popular of the year and is made up mainly of drawings and paintings by Wale’s leading artists, both past and present. The works very in subject matter and style from the figurative to the abstract. It has the exciting element that once a work is sold it is immediately removed and replaced by an alternative piece, meaning that any two days at the exhibition might never be the same. Kathryn Maple, said, “Under a Hot Sun is my first solo show, it is huge opportunity to show my paintings at the Walker Art Gallery. The Walker has a great permanent collection and I’m in the company of many artists who have inspired my practice.Gethin Evans, Towards Skomer – study 3 graphite and pencil on paper 135cm x 105cm 2016, who is exhibiting at the Tregony Gallery Drawing In exhibition