Kate Trafeli

"The marriage and dissonance of vibrant hues, shapes and composition in my paintings reflect the way I experience the world: fractured but alive with possibility. My work comes from a deep emotive place - I want the viewer to feel that, and to be drawn in."

- Kate Trafel

Colour synesthesia, composition and visible brushstrokes evoke mood and narrative in Kate's works. The fragments visible in her paintings and sculptures originate out of many avenues: personal and and external histories, magical realism and fabulist literature, music, architecture, light’s effect on the picture plane. Her practice is grounded in moments and histories from her own and others’ lives, expressed through abstraction and mark making. Kate's paintings seem familiar and yet otherworldly, with the representational components providing touchstones for the viewer while evading definite answers. The resulting ‘story-pictures’ create an immersive environment, a resonance between the viewer and the work.

Kate Trafeli works in colour theory and structure: how colours interact and affect one another combined with composition to make a whole that is mysterious and transporting. The artist explores how we each instinctively relate to colour and shapes strongly and individually. Using traditional media of oil and watercolour, Trafeli's paintings trace experiences, histories, difficulties, decisions and journeys in jewell tones and a combination of the figurative and abstract.

Kate Trafeli lives and works in North London, having grown up in Western US, and lived in Boston, New Orleans, Los Angeles and London. For ten years Trafeli lived in Italy; the city's language, history and culture are of fundamental influence to her iconography and palette.