Kate Bright

Throughout her career, Bright has ensnared the viewer and delivered them to a plane where individual imaginaries and collective consciousness collide—creating the perfect moment, on the perfect day, in the perfect season—tinged with the reality of our fading connection to the land. In closing, Bright offers this prescription for contemporary landscapes, “It seems that the further we remove ourselves from nature physically, the more we wish to embrace it culturally[…]The depiction of the natural whether by way of fantasy, myth, or the picturesque is allowed in the studio as compensation for our lost relationship with the outdoors.” One can only hope these evocative investigations continue as they have countless times in Bright’s work, from frigid lanes coated in fresh snow, untroubled by treadmarks and footprints; to pools of Mediterranean blue water whose shimmering surface seems to to lap the edge of the canvas, inviting you in; and now inenigmatic investigations of British flora cut with tropical shades that render it simultaneously alien and achingly familiar.  In providing these small escapes, perhaps Bright is presenting a catalyst that can once again spark an empathetic connection to the natural realm.