Kate Williamson: Waipori Falls Lightcatchers

Kate has made Waipori Falls her home for six years now, and during this time has made an assortment of forest friends, many of whom she has named. Some birds swoop in to introduce themselves while she is out tramping the Waipori Gorge. These include Tomtits, Fantails, Tui, Grey Warblers and Bellbirds. At different times of the year, the trees are adorned with dozens of Wood Pigeons balancing precariously on tiny branches, and a flock of brightly coloured Rosella Parakeets have nested close to the village. Kate has also discovered a resident population of tiny Rifleman birds, Titipounamu, living here in the DOC reserve.
Like Kate’s water studies while living next to the Otago Harbour, which resulted in her Cockle Hunter series, this new body of work represents an important milestone in her artistic career. Kate uses “action painting” to capture spontaneously the expressionistic patterns found in the dense undergrowth, the crisscrossing trunks of trees, the web of branches interposed among the crown ferns, dark mosses, and glowing tendrils of lichen.
These exciting new works reveal, through multi-layered paint, the forest as a complex living organism, a vegetative web of shadow and light.