Kathryn Maple – a Year of Drawings

Kathryn Maple (b. 1989, Canterbury) is an artist specialising in drawing and painting. Her large-scale paintings feature urban, suburban and rural landscapes which are frequently populated by human figures. Her work is distinctive for its use of intensely layered mark making, lending the work both urgency and intimacy. The places and people depicted, rendered in a range of painting and drawing materials, are frequently afforded a sense of wildness or mystery by dint of their colour palette, collage-like compositions and recurring motifs such as wind-blown trees and winding pathways.

This, her first monograph, features 379 images, many of which are reproduced for the first time. These include the presentation of her recent major series of oil pastel on paper works 'A Year of Drawings', alongside reproductions of her mixed media works on paper, as well as large oils on canvas.

An essay by Kathryn Lloyd, writer, artist and Contemporary Art Editor at The Burlington Magazine, offers insight into Maple’s impulse to explore the world around her through her work. Large-scale paintings, replete with dense layers of marks, are constructed by means of personal encounter, memory and imagination. Details of man-made objects, tree bark and human skin, for instance, become composite, crucial in capturing fleeting experiences of place and of people. Lloyd brings out the symbolism of Maple’s work, making art historical comparisons while connecting these to the specific local characteristics of Maple’s familiar South London landscapes and the importance of walking to the artist’s practice.

An interview with independent curator and critic Anneka French is focused on 'A Year of Drawings', a series of 365 drawings made daily since January 2022 outside the artist’s studio. They discuss the process, materials and art historical and literary influences upon Maple’s work, with a focus on how her drawing and painting strands of work impact each other. Their conversation provides an insight into the thinking of the artist at a crucial stage in Maple’s career.

Taking its title from the lyrics of The Cure’s A Forest (1980), Editor Matt Price’s essay 'Into the Trees' offers an introduction to, and an overview of,' A Year of Drawings', discussing examples of the works and considering aspects of the series ranging from art historical precedents to themes,...