Kate Boucher

Kate Boucher is an experienced, enthusiastic and inspirational tutor who specialises in building students' creative confidence in a supportive teaching environment. She trained at Chelsea School of Art and recently gained a Master of Fine Art from West Dean College. She was awarded a prestigious QEST scholarship, was the Edward James Foundation Scholar in 2015/16 and winner of the Valarie Power Prize for Visual Arts. Her dark and evocative charcoal drawings often have unnaturally tilted horizons, hints of a double exposure and foregrounds that appear to shift and slip. Her practice also includes handmade felt and forged metal structures also created as a response to landscape.

Her work is held in a number of private collections, was exhibited in the Stewards Bar in West Dean House in 2015, and her large landscape drawing commissioned by the Edward James Foundation hangs in the college refectory.

Describe your approach to teaching:
I want my students to develop their individual creativity, enjoy learning and be inspired by the work of other artists. I encourage students to learn traditional techniques but also experiment, embrace happy accidents and develop their own style.

What inspires your work?
I've been heavily influenced by the work of the painter, Andrew Wyeth, whose paintings seemed to have an implied narrative, a slight edginess that elicits an emotional response in the viewer and this is a quality I'm looking for in my own work.