Moving between painting, drawing, printmaking and installation, Kate Downie has long excelled in her depiction of ‘place’, with a fascination for urban and industrial environments. This experience led to being appointed Artist in Residence for the 50th anniversary of the Forth Road Bridge, as well as documenting the construction of the Queensferry Crossing and St. James Quarter in Edinburgh.
Now, in total contrast, Downie has embraced the fresh air of Scottish coastlines in Grasslands – a three year project – to present a truly dynamic study of our wild seascapes from Fife to the Northern Isles.
‘Kate Downie is a visual explorer, experimenter and innovator, always inventing, trying something new. [Her] work is a revelation… changing the way we see. Art should both challenge and delight. Enter her world, what does it feel like?’. Lynne Green, from On the Wild Side.
Rush Grass at Brindister Voe depicts, with delightful clarity, this sheltered sea inlet and open harbour on the west coast of Shetland. The forked tracks guide the eye towards the fenced wetland plants, leading out to the bay and dark silhouette of distant islands. The palette of soft grey, charcoal black and earthy tones is interrupted by the peachy glow of the evening sun lingering low over the shoreline, suspended between day and dusk. The mood is quiet and contemplative, capturing the shifting weather, open space and subdued light. Loose brushwork in ink and watercolour allows the seascape to feel vibrantly alive through the golden meadow of rush grasses. The central luminous strip of water acts as a visual destination where land, sky and water merge, to offer a distinctive sense of stillness and solitude.
The Firth of Tay is a protected intertidal wetland, the largest in the UK, featuring salt marshes, mudflats and reedbed – a natural site for rare aquatic plants, wildfowl, wading birds and geese. With close-up observation, Salt Marsh places the viewer behind a thick patch of tall grasses, looking out across the river to the soft-focus blur of the horizon.
Downie’s artistic style is energetic and gestural, characterised by fluid washes, splattered pigment and confident brushstrokes. Rather than precise detail, she captures the vitality and movement of the shoreline with emerald-green grasses and sprouting vegetation with tangible texture. The contrast between the intricate foreground and the calm expanse of the estuary give the scene both compelling intimacy and openness, celebrating the untamed beauty of the marsh land.
As a general term for coastal, underwater vegetation, Fjord Grass is illustrated as a decorative cyanotype – a photographic process that produces a monochromatic, Prussian-blue image. The slender stems with blade-like, blue-green leaves bend and cross-cross, flowing gracefully with elegant, choreographed motion.
The cyanotype creates a cool, translucent quality, while soft washes of pale green, cream and yellow express sunlight filtering through the foliage. The textured fragility of Xuan paper allows the pigments to bloom and melt together with a luminous shimmer as if imagining a whisper of wind blowing through the grass with remarkable sensitivity.
‘How do you know what wind looks like until you see a crop of ripening barley and see the eddies and twirls of the wind as it passes over? Grass may be common but it is resilient, responsive and best of all, it dances with the wind.’ – Kate Downie
Brough Study, Orkney distils the rugged drama of the coastline into a deceptively simple, impressionistic, horizontal plane of land and sea. Two sharply defined cliffs anchor the scene, the fractured edges and gestural lines conveying the ancient, weathered rock. The precise palette is central to the work’s quiet intensity: a blush-pink sky contrasts with the teal-grey sea, while muted ochre along the cliff tops adds warmth without diminishing the austere atmosphere. A balance of delicate observation, with controlled abstraction, creates a seascape that feels both contemporary and timeless, through experimental mark-making and a finely judged harmony of colour.
‘It was a bright and cheerful afternoon,
Towards the end of the sunny month of June,
All things rejoiced beneath the sun; the weeds,
The river, the corn-fields, and the reeds.’
– Percy Bysshe Shelley, from ‘Summer and Winter’
Living in Orkney, Anne Bevan’s sculptures are inspired by the tide, geology and energy of shore and sea. The Sculptor’s Garden illustrates the untamed character of her beach-front garden with a sweep of wind-tossed grasses, shrubs and reeds, while over the waving wire fence is a wide stretch of still water. Rendered in dark, moody monochrome, subtle splashes of pale yellow depict wild flowers and shellfish-shaped stones, while dramatic streaks of light across the sky suggest rain clearing through the grey clouds. The soft illumination and long tonal contrasts suggest late afternoon, when the low northern light enhances the quiet grandeur of the Orcadian landscape.
Rain Shore, Brough of Birsay is a vibrant study of the uninhabited island, (with a causeway to the mainland at low tide) – renowned for its Pictish and Norse settlements. The elevated perspective portrays the thick grassy carpet flowing over a steep cliff down to the rocky shore, with its pools, boulders and sandy beach beneath a brooding sky.
A superb contrast between the brilliant mossy green and the shiny black rocks is especially effective. The foreground glows with fresh, saturated colour, conveying the vitality of rain-soaked summer growth, while the ink-scratched texture denotes the rugged permanence of the coastal geology. Downie’s ad hoc marks capture the changing weather and shifting light of Orkney, creating a landscape that feels immediate, windswept and full of quiet energy.
An expressive ink and wash study, Bog Rushes, Shetland portrays the stark beauty of the lyrical landscape with remarkable spontaneity. A dense foreground of spiky rushes dominates the composition, creating a lively, twisted tangle to show the hardy resilience of vegetation shaped by wind and weather. Beyond, the eye is drawn across open water to the softly silhouetted form of a distant island, giving the scene a convincing sense of depth and expansive perspective.
The restrained palette presents a calm mood, while a single stroke of luminous yellow introduces an unexpected warmth, suggesting a patch of soft sandy beach. Downie’s economical brushwork allows the rushes, shoreline and hills to emerge in an abstracted flourish rather than detailed description. The result is a landscape that feels both immediate and timeless, celebrating the wild simplicity of Shetland’s coastal scenery.
In 2010, Downie visited China to experience a residency in Beijing, to study Chinese art-making and ink painting, returning here for further research projects. This ancient technique became her new artistic language, extending the vocabulary to make it her own.
Midsummer Walk is a decorative watercolour on paper that expertly marries European sensibility with a distinct Asian aesthetic in its drawing style, with a strong influence of Chinese ink painting. Her delicate, fluid use of paint demonstrates a mastery of its transparent tonal quality. The slender, flowing lines of the leaves are akin to the art of crisply-defined calligraphy, giving a sense of vitality and rhythm. Soft shades of lemon and lime smoothly blend and bleed together, suggesting sunlight filtering through meadow grasses.
The generous use of white space adds to the feel of ‘midsummer’ as the interplay of colour and sudden splatters of paint echo growth, movement and shimmering warmth. Overall, a fresh, emotional feeling of light, airiness and peace, to picture so poetically the simple elegance of nature across the wild grasslands, ‘dancing with the wind.’
Kate Downie: Grasslands is part of the 2026 Edinburgh Art Festival. The exhibition’s well-illustrated accompanying catalogue features essays by Tommy Zyw, Lynne Green and Kate Downie. Images of the paintings, and a film showing the artist at work can be viewed on the Gallery’s website.
Artmag gratefully thanks Vivien Devlin for this review.
