Biography

Katherine Perrins (b. 1983, London) is a British painter living and working in Somerset. Her practice explores the emotional and psychic resonance of everyday spaces, and the ways in which memory, motherhood and the passage of time can become embedded within seemingly ordinary objects and environments.

Working predominantly in oil, Perrins draws upon the visual language of still life while extending its boundaries beyond the domestic interior. Her paintings often begin with moments of heightened observation: sunlight falling across a familiar object, a child’s abandoned toy, the folds of washing, or the strange sculptural forms of an empty playground. Figures remain conspicuously absent. Instead, objects, structures, light and shadow become traces of human presence and the invisible rhythms of care.

Motherhood has become central to this enquiry. Earlier bodies of work focused upon the domestic spaces and quotidian objects encountered through caring for young children, elevating moments easily overlooked within the repetition of family life. More recently, as her children have grown, Perrins’ gaze has moved outwards into playgrounds and communal landscapes. These new paintings explore spaces associated with childhood and play as sites of memory, transition and shifting time. Monumental climbing structures, slides and nets become at once familiar and strange, hovering between landscape, still life and abstraction.

Light remains a recurring presence throughout Perrins’ work: both an observed phenomenon and a means of transforming the everyday into something momentarily charged or sacred.

Perrins studied Fine Art at Falmouth College of Arts before completing an MA in Fine Art with Distinction at City & Guilds of London Art School. Her work has been exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, Drawing Now Art Fair in Paris, London Art Fair and in exhibitions across the UK and France. She is represented by CLOSE Ltd and lives and works in Somerset.