This page is where you can learn a little about my life, which may give you a better understanding of my works. I have asked my husband to write the story as I am too self-conscious.

In the beginning

Kate was born in England in 1952, the youngest member of a large family of eight children. She had an enthusiastic love for animals. This saw her devoting a lot of her spare time looking after a variety of pets, wildlife and especially other peoples' horses where possible, in hope of a ride as a reward. The only other interest in her life came from a natural talent she possessed, she could paint.

Growing Up With Art

Many summer holidays were spent in Wales exploring the hills and mountains. A favourite playground was an old manor house abandoned after the war, fully furnished with huge paintings and mirrors still hanging on the walls. The mystery of the eerie abandoned manor house among the trees, was the spark behind many of her early drawings and paintings.

This enthusiasm for art was later more publicly rewarded when a sketch of the old Welsh manor house was hung in her school assembly hall when she was 11 years old. Even she admits it was a proud moment.

In the same year, she was accepted for a placement at Moseley Art School. Placements at the school were highly sought after but unfortunately she couldn't take the placement. After losing her father six years earlier, the family business had failed, so financing a private education at art school was just not possible, being just one of the eight.

Her teenage years were turbulent and one might say 'character-building'. She was selling some agreeable pieces of work to finance such luxuries as food and clothes. A local gallery owner, Garfield Snow, assisted her at this time. She finally found some stability and at 23 years old, we were happily married and had two sons, Simon and Steven. She continued to paint but only when she felt her family duties and nursing career allowed her timeout to express her feelings.

The Artist Re-Born

In 1996 we moved to Western Australia to escape our hectic lifestyle. She eagerly took to her new way of life which, allowed her to relax and really explore herself, revealing strengths and weaknesses that she can now use to her advantage.

Soon after our arrival she took a TAFE course in watercolours hosted by John Baldock of Alpha Studios, a talented local artist, exploring a more freestyle form of expression in a medium she had never tried before. As a private student of John, she developed more advanced techniques and attitudes which have enhanced her artistic abilities. She now favours the challenge of watercolour and it has become her preferred medium, but she is always experimenting, 'pushing the boundaries' and, as usual, enjoying every moment of it.

She has experimented with 'get down and dirty' freestyle pottery which she, along with everything else in her life, enjoyed immensely and may one day develop further.

She has embraced her revived freedom of expression with the energy, flare and natural talent which she always possessed but had kept suppressed because of the devotion to her family and career. She now paints with that inner feeling, love and passion of a person set free. She has finally admitted, her art is the means of her self expression, the release, the emotional massage that her inner self needs. She has done the hard miles toward inner fulfilment and now wants share it with the rest of the world.

I always believed she was one in a million, now everyone can share that belief.

Ian Petty.

Email: feedback@katepetty.net

My website designed and maintained by my husband Ian Petty