As a narrative painter and ceramicist interested in a fantastic reality, Kate Lawless turns towards the landscape tradition and creates a fictive world. The nineteenth century painters invested nature with the drama of human psychology and expression, making the commonplace extraordinary. As an historically late and, therefore, anxious artist, she devises a vocabulary of images as a method of wish fulfillment.

 Kate uses images of nature, soil, sky and seasons as elements which are recognizable yet open to interpretation. She builds structures with clay and paint to create totems, dwellings and shields of protection.

The Surrealists took full advantage of free association while engaged in producing an exquisite corpse. She, too, uses this method, combining observation and invention, giving life to invented forms and using figurative elements as agents of posture and action.