Here's the first part of our in-depth interview with abstract landscape artist Kerry Souter, ahead of her solo show 'A Kiss of the Sea'. The show runs from Friday 21st June 2024 to Sunday 21st July 2024.
Summary
Kerry Souter is an abstract painter who began her artistic journey studying textile design in the late 1980s and early 1990s. After graduation, she worked in dressmaking and fashion design, later transitioning to felt making about fifteen years ago, creating both two-dimensional landscape "paintings" with wool and three-dimensional pieces. Around 2020, during lockdown, she turned to painting as she sought more control over her finished product than felt making allowed.
Her artistic process is deeply experimental, working primarily with acrylics and various mediums to create textured surfaces. She often incorporates collage using her own handmade papers and recycled paint flakes. Kerry begins each painting without a preconceived outcome, instead focusing on layering as much "information and interest" onto the canvas as possible in the early stages, which later influences the final composition. She typically works on multiple paintings simultaneously to maintain a cohesive theme across a group.
Kerry draws inspiration primarily from coastlines, particularly the Ayrshire coast in Scotland, where her studio is located. She's drawn to the encounter of different textures and surfaces at the shoreline—water, sand, rocks, and the life growing on them. While her locations may be specific, her color choices are rarely taken directly from nature but instead emerge intuitively during the painting process. She tends to favor blues and greens but ultimately follows where the painting leads rather than adhering to a predetermined palette.
For Kerry, daily studio practice is essential, serving as a form of meditation that benefits both her artwork and her personal well-being. She views her artistic process as deeply connected to her life, influenced by contemporary artists like Nicholas Wilton, whose "Art to Life" philosophy resonates with her understanding of creativity as an integral part of daily existence. She credits her artistic practice with helping her observe the world differently, constantly noticing colors, textures, and environments that may later influence her work.
TRANSCRIPT
aHi, I'm Kerry Souter. I'm an abstract painter. My background started when I went to art school back in the late eighties, early nineties. I studied textile design at art school and after graduating, I continued to work a little bit. I was interested in dressmaking and fashion design and I created some wedding dresses and special occasion wear. I always wanted to try and keep some form of art in my life, but over the years and having family and things like that, that sort of fell by the wayside.
I started felt making around fifteen years ago. I got interested through a friend of mine from art school and it was two-D and three-D felt making. I liked to make landscape felt paintings really because it is like painting with wool. I was also interested in the three-D design. I made some bags and other sort of sculptural pieces. I exhibited my felt art and I sold it to a certain extent, but towards around 2000, I was having some problems with it. It had its own limitations. The final process of wet felt making, it gets wet and you roll it and it shrinks and so it changes the design. Sometimes it brings about a really good product and sometimes not so much. It could be a bit disappointing, the outcome.
I was beginning to feel like I wanted a bit more control over the finished product and that is when I became interested in looking at painting again which I'd done in the past but just not on a professional level. It was around 2000 during the lockdown and the lovely spring that we had that I started painting and it just really took off from there. I just got really interested in it. I think because painting has more opportunities for exhibiting than textiles. It's a more traditional art form and people understand painting a bit more I think.
Through Instagram, things just grew from there and a few galleries discovered me like yourself. That sort of is the background to today really. I've just been exhibiting since about 2021 and now I have my own studio. I started off painting at home, had a small room that I painted in and then two years ago I moved to this studio. I'm rapidly growing out of it now because my work's getting bigger. It's quite full at the moment but it's been great having this space outside of the house and it's a beautiful location as well. We're near the beach here so that gives me inspiration every day when I come to work.
When I was felt making in the beginning I was working producing mainly landscapes. A lot of it was commission work really and I would do landscapes. I would do some lovely scenes with Highland cows and things like that because people seem to like Highland cows and sheep. The actual product of the wool and the process of the felt making can create some really interesting textures and you can add all sorts of materials into felt. Then with the shrinkage of the felt it creates all these raised textures and it can distort an image as well.
Over time the felt making became a more abstract form just by the nature of it really and that's what I really got interested in. I realized that I didn't really want to just create the landscapes as we see them and that I was interested in a more abstract direction. The same was true when I began painting. I had influence around that time. There were several artists online and all sorts of online courses. During lockdown I was taking every free course available online and there's lots of contemporary abstract artists that I'm really interested in. Not necessarily trying to work the way that they work but they're just quite inspiring. It was just quite eye-opening to me and some of the free courses available I felt, value-wise, that I learned more in that short space of time than I did at art school back in the day.
It's the abstract nature of it—I just think it gives me a lot more freedom. The way that I work, the process of it combines with that abstract direction.
My artistic process is very experimental. That's the main thing that I enjoy about painting really—that you get to play with it, that you can try out all sorts of different techniques and colours and textures. I work mainly in acrylic and there are so many acrylic mediums nowadays that you can use to get all sorts of different textures and effects with it. I'm enjoying finding out about all of them and developing my work that way.
In fact, this group of work has been quite strongly based on the different textures that I can create. I really want to go in that direction so that the surface of the paint is quite textured and bumpy and lined. I know you're not meant to touch artworks but I touch my artworks all the time and feel them. I just love being able to make them feel like they're more three-dimensional pieces really than just flat paint.
I use collage as well. I make my own collage papers, gel print collage papers and I use all sorts of different techniques and products to get those collage papers. In some of my more recent work, I like to think about how I can recycle as well. I've been using some old dried up paint flakes and sprinkling them into the gel prints and transferring them onto wet strength tissue paper and then adding that onto the paintings. It gives you different surfaces to work on and the paint responds in different ways when it's on canvas or when it's on paper.
I'll start off a painting and it's a really fun time at the beginning because I'm not really thinking about what it's going to look like. I have no idea what it will look like in the end really. My main aim at the beginning is just to get as much information and interest onto the canvas as possible because that's when later on the exciting little surprises happen. The more I can add on in the beginning—I'll use lots of colour, maybe colours that are not going to be the predominant colour in the finished piece. I can draw on the painting with water-based crayons and mark it with scratching into and get lots of texture.
In the later stages when I'm composing it a bit more and looking at the composition, the final paint marks that I make are affected by what's underneath and that's what brings about the finished effect really. That's where you get all the really nice surprises because you apply something on top of something else and all these layers help to bring forward those finished surfaces. What I like about it as well is that there's a history in the paintings—they've been through their own sort of story of development.
I tend to work on a group at a time and I'll keep them all at similar stages and then try and finish them all together so that they have a sort of a common theme around them. Each one gets its own sort of personal finish.
In terms of inspiration, I do sometimes use photographs. It tends to be places that I've visited at some point. I've got favorite places in Scotland although not only Scotland. I do go out sketching but I don't ever start work from a sketch as such. I will do some sketching outdoors and then I also work in my sketchbooks in the studio. I tend to use my sketchbooks just for experimenting and playing in. I'll try out different color ways. It's just a safe place to just muck about really and test things out.
My inspiration tends to be focused—certainly at the moment, and it's always changing—but at the moment I'm really drawn to coastlines in Scotland around here. We're on the Ayrshire coast and I just love that area. If you can get a quiet secluded spot—there's lots of cliffs around the coastline down here and there's the ruined old Greenan Castle just down the road from here. I just love that encounter of the different surfaces and textures that you see at the coastline. You've got the water and the movement of the water and then the sand and the rocks and all the life that grows on those rocks and the marks that have been made over so many years. There's lots of texture going on there. Obviously the colours as well but my paintings' colours are never sort of directly taken from nature.
The colours I use in my paintings—I don't have a definite color palette in mind sometimes. I will sometimes use a limited palette in a group of paintings but I quickly become quite bored of that. I've tried several times to think "this group of work is going to be this particular color palette" and it just doesn't work that way. I have to have the freedom in it I think just to experiment as I go. That's just part of the process. I tend not to do commissions for that very reason because I like to be free to let the painting go in whichever direction it seems to be taking its own path.
Quite often my paintings end up completely different to how I could ever have imagined. That's what instructs me for the next group of work because it's often sort of an accidental surprise that leads me to find something that I like that then I'll use in later paintings—and then they don't turn out that way either. It just grows and moves on from that.
The color palettes—I get into trouble from my children a lot for just using blues and greens all the time, but those are the colors I'm kind of drawn to. I just love color and that's the thing that is so much fun in the painting process—just seeing colors used together and finding that combination and that feeling that you get when mixing paint together and blending them together, seeing what works and what doesn't work.
It's very much a way of feeling my way through the paintings. I can't really explain in any other way than I just feel what needs to be done. I know the rules, but what I found in the past is that when I try to think too much about the painting, I can produce a competent enough painting, but when it works best is when I'm not thinking and I'm just feeling the painting and I feel the colors that work best and I feel the way the composition is going. That's generally when it works and so the color selection tends to be quite instinctive. I can start off with a color palette in mind but it can take me in all directions really and that's the fun part of it—just mixing it up and seeing how you can surprise yourself with it really.
I have to keep reminding myself, especially when I'm trying to work on a lot of paintings like this for a particular event like the solo show I'm going to be having, it can become like a bit of a job—that I've got all this work to produce. But the reason that I'm doing it is because it's so much fun and just the actual process of making the paintings is the brilliant part. That's the bit that I love.
Occasionally you do get a bit off track and things, and it comes out in the painting as well. You can tell when I've been trying too hard and trying to make something work, whether it's the color or the composition—it just doesn't work. Sometimes you need a break from that and then just to come back fresh and just mess things up again.
Sometimes when a painting's not working it's really good to actively disrupt it. I can get too precious, which I think I'm not alone in when it comes to painters, but I think too precious on a particular area or something that I like and I'll try and paint around it and try and make it work because I really like that bit and I want it to stay as part of the painting. Inevitably it always ends up getting covered up because it just doesn't work that way once you get too precious about anything. So it's good to come in and disrupt it and that can be with a different color, just covering up a whole area or something, and it's just a fresh start. It often resolves itself really quickly after that.
It's strange because it feels like I'm going back to square one with a painting but what I find is all the layers underneath, they're still there. You can play with them. My process is an awful waste of paint because I tend to put paint on and take paint off. Some days it feels like I'm wiping more paint off and putting it in the bin than putting paint on the canvas. But it's a very emotional process and it really is responsive to the way I'm feeling about it.
I try to get into the studio every day. I'm not always feeling like painting every day, but I can make myself feel like painting by getting into that frame of mind and it's the painting that puts me in a good mood really and gets me into that frame of mind.
I try and come into the studio every day, at least every weekday, and I found that doing that really benefits my practice. I can see it having a benefit in my work and in my life and everything. If I'm away from the studio for too long now, for example, I haven't painted since Thursday last week and this is now Monday and I can feel that itch. So I need to get back to it—it's a form of meditation really for me. It's just something that's become part of my daily life now and it just helps me in other areas of my life. Having that time in the studio is really beneficial for me as a person but also for my work. So it's important for me to come in every day even if it's just a short space of time.
I can do different types of work depending on how long I've got. Sometimes it's just preparing things in the studio and then I have peace of mind that I know that I'm ready to go the next day. Sometimes it's just coming in and I spend a lot of time just looking at the work, maybe not actually putting any paint on canvas but making decisions about what stages I'm at and what needs to be done next. That can just settle my mind as well for the following day and what I'm going to do.
Particularly when I'm on a deadline for a project or something, that can be a bit of a hindrance. There's always this pressure and feeling like I've got to be doing something all the time, but a lot of the process is looking—just studying the painting and deciding what it needs and what I like, what I want to keep and what I want to change. It's a balance of the two because I don't want to spend too long—you can think all you like about a painting and what you should do with it but until you start working on it, that's when the things happen. You can't predict those surprises that happen once you start painting.
Daily practice is important and it helps to keep me connected to the work that I'm doing. It's good to have breaks away from it and come back to it with fresh eyes but I feel just having the continuity of working every day keeps my mind in a flow of what I'm doing with each piece. That's what I try to do.
Well, I was never very good at art history when I was at art school. Influences in my art are mainly contemporary artists. I've discovered an American artist Nicholas Wilton who has a big art course called Art to Life and his course is called the Creative Visionary Programme CVP, which I haven't actually done the full paid course, but he does a lot of free workshops and things. His teaching really spoke to me—just his attitude towards painting. It's called Art to Life and he talks about how art is part of your life and life is your art as well and how connected it all is. That's what I really felt—I don't think I ever realized before how connected art is to my life and how important it is. Maybe it's an age thing as you grow older and you really start to look for the meanings in things.
I recognize now how important it is to be creative every day. I don't do yoga or meditation or anything like that but for me working in the studio is my meditation. It's where I work things out. It's where I go to be happy. It's where I go if I'm a bit unhappy and I always feel better after being in the studio and painting.
I think being creative in any way helps you to look atthe world in a different way as well and you start noticing things. It's about noticing and observing things and that's your entire surroundings. Wherever I go I'm on the lookout for what's around me and noticing the colours and the textures and just feeling the space and the environment. I'm particularly interested more in landscapes I suppose, so I find that when I'm out in the landscape, I'm not thinking about how it will look in a painting but I'm observing it and trying to make an imprint in my mind for future reference. I suppose that's where my inspiration comes from.
