Katie Whitford
Katie Whitford (b. 1995) is a visual artist based in Bristol, UK, where she is a member of Solis Studio. Her practice explores the quiet, everyday intimacies of place, capturing moments of stillness, softness, and memory embedded in domestic and familiar environments.
Her prints and drawings are densely composed, layered with motifs and visual references drawn from personal experience, films, museums, books, and the places she moves through. Through these interwoven sources, Katie constructs rich visual tapestries that are deeply personal yet widely evocative.
At the heart of Katie’s practice is drawing. Her observations are immediate and intuitive, often unconstrained by linear perspective or traditional compositional structure. This sense of spontaneity sets the tone for her printmaking process, where she slows down and carefully builds images that hold quiet, narrative weight. Her work is animated by a fascination with the gentle ordinariness of life, and with how objects shape the characterise a life.
Recently, Katie has begun working with quilting as an extension of her drawing practice, creating slow, tactile portraits of everyday objects as wall hangings. Much like in her prints, she uses fabric to build layered compositions assembling naïve, abstracted forms that are brought to life with stitching and texture. These quilted works continue her exploration of domestic space and soft narrative, offering a playful and physical expression of her visual language.
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Katie studied for her BA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths before accepting an 18-month scholarship at the Royal Drawing School, London. In 2023, she completed her MA in Multi-Disciplinary Printmaking at the University of the West of England, Bristol. She has undertaken international residencies and has work in private collections in Italy, France, UK, Ireland and North America, as well as the Royal Collection. She has exhibited work at Bankside Gallery, Christies and The Mall. In 2019, she was selected for the Paragon Press printing prize and had her first solo show in the summer of 2022.