“You must offer real, living, beautifully coloured flowers…real flowers springing from your own soul — not even cut flowers. You must offer the flowers of the art that is in you — the symbols of all that is noble, and beautiful, and inspiring. Flowers that will often change a colourless leaf into an established and thoughtful thing.“
— Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Seemliness
Kathryn Allan, BA (Hons), MPhil, PGCE
b.1977
I studied Visual Communication at The Glasgow School of Art and completed an MPhil at the Stirling Centre for International Publishing and Communication. I make things with materials in my own non-representational idiom and in two and three dimensions, and I make with words. I am excited by the visual and written surface as a place, and interested in art as holder of empathetic space and the confessional site of the sketchbook. I am also interested in the ekphrastic ability of words to amplify the visual — when words meaningfully occupy the gap in between the seeing and the seen.
Collaboration with other artists, and the opportunity it gives for discussion and communion through creativity, is a method of working that I welcome — friendship as a way of making art.
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I also hold a Postgraduate Certificate in Education. I am a fully-qualified teacher with many years' experience working in state-maintained education, as a class teacher, subject leader and school leader. I have also served as a school governor.
Education
BA (Hons) Design—Visual Communication (First Class, with Distinction in Historical & Critical Studies), The Glasgow School of Art 2001
Foundation Diploma in Art & Design, Hull College 1997
MPhil Publishing Studies (Distinction), University of Stirling 2003 — dissertation Communications Revolutions: The Impact of Printing and the Internet Parallel
PGCE, University of Hull 2007
Essays
Le lit défait (or Mark's unmade bed)
On-grid (an elegant clarion call)
Awards & Grants
Historical & Critical Studies Extended Essay Prize (School of Design & Craft), The Glasgow School of Art
Arts & Humanities Research Council postgraduate grant
McGowan Prize, University of Stirling
The Dickinson Prize in Education, University of Hull
Eridge Trust grants, enabling children‘s appreciation of visual art through gallery visits
Writing for Publication
START & AD Magazine, National Society for Education in Art & Design
Designing, Design & Technology Association
a-n Magazine
Memberships
Society of Scottish Artists
British Association of Art Therapists (Associate Member)