Kathryn Desforges’ process-driven pieces carry echoes of elemental forces and half-glimpsed, half-remembered places. Her two and three-dimensional works convey a quiet presence, imbued with a sense of both strength and fragility. Their painted, stained, carved and sanded surfaces carry the history of their making within them - residues of action - their details revealing themselves gradually with closer looking. 


A Devon born, Yorkshire-based artist, Kathryn creates unique works in mixed-media and small-edition prints. Trained as a printmaker, with a strong background in drawing, she approaches her pieces through that lens - building up subtle layers of paint, applying traces of pigment, layers of collaged print, carving and sanding back, and embracing the incidental. 


Guided by the materials themselves, and the slow, physical rhythm of making, each piece evolves through experimentation, intuitive decision-making, and the balance of control and unpredictability. She offsets soft, organic marks against rigid forms, lines and edges, creating shifts in balance and tension as compositions develop. In recent work, intimate, repetitive gestures multiply and build across surfaces like debris, suggesting larger elemental processes, directional flow and mass-movement. 


Kathryn holds a BA in Fine Art from Kingston University and has undertaken artist residencies in the UK and Japan, including a Post-Graduate Fellowship at Leicester Print Workshop. She exhibits widely, most recently in London with Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair and No Place Art. Her practice is closely interwoven with her adjacent career as a printmaking technician and tutor, which continues to inform and evolve her approach to making.

A man with a beard is standing in front of two paintings