Arts Canterbury Interview 2025
Name/age
My name is Kate McLeod.
How old am I again? I stopped counting a few years back now, I’m an early 80’s child, so how old does that make me? I still feel 21 if that counts.
What medium(s) do you work in?
Variety is the spice of life. I love working in a huge variety of mediums and love mixing my own paints from scratch. Colour mixing is one of the biggest parts of my practice, as it is colour that can elicit such a visceral, emotional response in me. I prefer to buy single pigment paints and custom mix all my colours. From watercolours, acrylics, mica pigments, pure pigments, oil paints, resin and I suppose one of my signature materials is metal leaf. I find it so primal to work with metal in its thinly sliced fragile state. Another material that is important to my practice is timber. As I hand make all my solid oak frames. Timber is such a sensational material as it can be so hard, yet so soft at the same time. Oh the duality! Hand sanding all the frames is the finishing touch to my mahi that I believe imparts lifeforce energy into my paintings.
Tell us about yourself in 50 words or less.
Painter, colour theorist, carpenter, tradie lady, pākeha, tangata tiriti, takatāpui, curator, collector, gardener, football and futsal coach, mother, historic house trustee and food lover. I’m a full time artist and work from my purpose built home-studio in Ilam, Ōtautahi.
Who is your favourite artist (living or deceased!)?
It’s so hard to choose just one. As I stand on the shoulders of so many incredible wāhine toa, such as Francis Hodgkins, Doris Lusk, Rita Angus, Louise Henderson, Seraphine Pick, Gretchen Albrecht, Judy Millar, Christina Popovici and more.
But if you really push me to choose just one, it would be Hilma af Klint. Seeing her works in the flesh brought me to tears. I was so overwhelmed when visiting The Ten Largest (1907) in the exhibition The Secret Paintings at the City Gallery Wellington that I had to leave the gallery for a breather and come back later to take it all in. Their monumental scale and layers of meaning hit me so deep. And that experience of art impacting my very being is one that I strive to elicit in others. It reminded me that we can say things with paint that we will never say with words.
What were your reasons for joining Arts Canterbury?
Connection and community.
What are three goals for your art this year?
Sell more art so I can continue my obsession of buying art materials and to sustain my art career.
Update my website - a constant work in progress.
Continue to create works that excite me.
Create opportunities for art making and travel.
Describe your favourite piece of art you have created – and why it’s your favourite.
My favourite piece of art is my most recent one, or more accurately, the one that is ahead of me. It’s the process that compels me to keep making.
Anything else you want to tell us - funny story, about yourself or your art?
No AI was harmed in the writing of this Q&A.