Continually drawn to certain marks, textures, and colours, she reflects why some details stand out more as she incorporates these influences into her works.
Kerry Souter is a Scottish abstract artist whose work explores the emotional and textural dimensions of coastal landscapes. Born in Dundee, she transforms her deep connection to Scotland's shorelines into intuitive, multi-layered paintings that invite viewers to experience both the physical textures and atmospheric qualities of these environments.
Personal Connection to the Sea
Growing up on Scotland's East coast and now residing on the West coast in Ayr, Kerry maintains a profound relationship with the sea. This connection has biographical roots-during her childhood, her father served in the Merchant Navy, and she would track his journeys across oceans on a toy globe with her mother. Today, when visiting beaches, she experiences these waters as connective threads to distant locations around the world, infusing her work with both personal memory and geographic imagination.
Kerry Souter's Artistic Journey
Kerry's formal training began at Gray's School of Art in Aberdeen, where she earned a BA(Hons) in Textile Design and Surface Decoration in 1992. While her career took various directions over the years, her textile background provided crucial insights into texture, pattern, and material relationships that would later define her painting style. In 2020, she began exhibiting professionally, quickly gaining representation with several UK galleries and building a collector base both nationally and internationally.
Creative Process and Artistic Philosophy
Kerry's practice is driven by a reflective engagement with her environment, particularly her attraction to specific marks, textures, and colors found in nature. Her coastal wanderings provide both inspiration and a philosophical framework-as she observes how shoreline elements blur into the distance, leaving only raw encounters with nature's presence.
Technical Approach
Working predominantly with acrylic paint and mixed media, Kerry creates each painting through a deliberate, time-intensive process. Over periods of weeks or months, she gradually builds complex surfaces through layers of texture, semi-transparent glazes, and carefully selected collage elements. This methodical approach of adding and subtracting material creates paintings with remarkable depth and visual history, where complex areas of intimate detail exist within more expressive, abstract landscapes. The resulting works achieve a balance between structured complexity and atmospheric openness that captures both the physical character and emotional essence of Scotland's coastal environments.