Painter, mother, dreamer of landscapes.

Artist Talk is a series by Densi where we speak with artists about the intersections of life and practice. As artists ourselves, these conversations are an ongoing way of understanding how creativity takes root, and how we can continue to cultivate its power.

Living and working on Bundjalung Country in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales, Kathryn Dolby is a painter whose work moves between the subconscious and the everyday, gesture and memory, the natural world and the interior life. Process-led and emotionally charged, her work has been shown widely across Australia and internationally, and was awarded the BAM Art Prize in 2020.

Art in three words: Mysterious, freeing, revealing.

On being an artist –

"I don't remember having a moment where I thought, 'I'm going to be an artist.' It's just what has always felt most natural to do."

The youngest of four with big age gaps, Kathryn was left to her own devices a lot growing up. To occupy herself, she was usually busy dancing or making something, “the need to express myself was there from an early age." Beginning with contemporary dance in primary school before moving into painting in high school, Kathryn is still fascinated by the connection between the two, that sense of a shared embodied gesture across both forms.

Kathryn went on to study Visual Arts at Southern Cross University, undertaking an arts industry placement in Sydney midway through as an artist's assistant within communal studios. "That experience really reinforced that it was where I wanted to be. It felt like home, being amongst other creatives who also spoke in a visual language."

A couple of years after graduating, she was found online by gallerist Amber Creswell Bell, who brought her work into Sydney's exhibition circuit. She has exhibited every year since graduating, a continuity she credits with "keeping everything rolling through life's obstacles and motherhood."

On unexpected inspiration –

"My dreams. I'm fascinated by what lies hidden within the subconscious and reveals itself while we're asleep."

Among the many places Kathryn draws from, it's dreams that arrive most unexpectedly. Lately, she has been dreaming of paintings - a recent dream cast a blue film over the landscape and a phrase from a children's song entered the work. She is now trying to make that painting in reality.

In the studio, Kathryn is also drawn to unexpected connections - associations from daily life that mirror and reflect one another, leading her into the realm of the uncanny and the surreal. "It's a playful and curious place to paint from." She's currently reading Carl Jung's autobiography and connecting with the work of Louise Bourgeois, Mamma Andersson, and Gertrude Abercrombie.

Most of the time though, ideas arrive through doing: being in the studio, laying paint down, pushing through uncertainties. But not always. "Sometimes inspiration arrives like a deluge on a day when I can't be in the studio, just to mess with me!" On days like this, Kathryn photographs moments quickly, journals words, thoughts and colours - while folding washing, doing other domestic duties, or out and about. These become lift-off points when she returns to the studio - though often they don’t demand attention. Gathered, then let go, these moments swirl in the periphery of her mind while she paints, resurfacing when the work calls for them.

On place –

"The memory of it feels deeply embodied now and resurfaces in the works when I'm drawing from the elements and my experience of matrescence. They swirl around together in my memory bank."

Kathryn's work is deeply rooted in place - Bundjalung Country, the Northern Rivers, her home studio. Her relationship to place has shifted over time, shaped by moments that have left a deep mark on her work. During both of Kathryn's pregnancies, and the birth of her second child, there were three major floods in the Northern Rivers. The intensity of that dramatic weather is etched into her experience of early motherhood - the elements, the land, the rhythms of the natural world all woven into the work that followed. Place, for Kathryn, is never just backdrop. It is material.

On process –

"Experimentation is freedom. It's challenging, stimulating and energizing. There has to be an element of play in the studio for me, to keep it interesting."

A painting finds its place, Kathryn says, when what's left is more of a sensation than an obvious scene, "with subtle elements of everyday life transforming into something new and unexpected." Getting there requires releasing control, layering, obscuring and revealing forms and ultimately allowing a gesture to hold emotional weight and remain unresolved. "It's in the tension between something rendered and something half-lost that the painting begins to breathe differently." The best surprises happen when a painting moves beyond her initial intentions and begins suggesting something back.

For Kathryn, the fragmented nature of painting as a mother has its own unexpected gifts. Being interrupted, having to stop and step away, means she sometimes returns to find a work is done. The opposite can happen too - she comes back to the studio with horror to find work she thought was complete still needs drastic, bold, necessary moves. "Giving the work some distance can be vital."

Recently, with no canvases left, she found an old pillowcase in the rag basket and painted a dream scene onto it. "I found it poetic and conceptually rich - connecting domesticity, feminist practice, and a more sustainable material practice." It was also born, simply, from a necessity to keep going.

Kathryn is also resourceful by necessity. Her studio leaks, so she works on aluminium and linen rather than timber. Kathryn counts herself lucky, a supportive family and partner and a practice that has always felt woven into life, “our family lives quite simply in order to keep our creative dreams afloat."

On residency –

"There are very few residencies that are family-friendly, which makes the ones that are extremely competitive."

Kathryn hasn't done a formal residency yet, though in June she'll undertake a self-directed one at Koru Sabi Lodge on Coodjinburra-Bundjalung Country - her first time creating at a distance from her home studio and in deeper immersion in nature. 

"Having new experiences is such a powerful way to fill the creative well," she says. "It refreshes you, allows you to see things in a new light." After years of insular home life, she feels open to it all. Her ideal residency could be anywhere. Though one in particular calls to her.

To travel to Paris and retrace the steps of her great-great aunt Grace Crowley, a modernist painter. "I feel the need to learn about my family history, as much of it is unknown to me," she says. There is a long lineage of creative women on her father's side, and connections to Belgium on her mother's. To follow that thread, she hopes, would fuel a renewed sense of identity.

See more of Kathryn's work - here

Kathryn Dolby on Artsy

Images supplied by artist