NCA for Refuge

Katy Smail was born and raised under the purple skies and scruffy trees of rural Scotland. She graduated from Edinburgh College of Art with a First-Class Honors degree, then moved to Brooklyn, NY for ten years where she worked as an illustrator, painter and art director.

Now, she is back under those ever-changing Scottish skies, with her husband and young son, happy to be surrounded by untamed inspiration and the space to paint larger, and wilder.

Katy has always been drawn to the feral, feminine energy of mother nature and the ways in which we can find comfort and understanding there. Using colour as an emotional language, her paintings ask the viewer to allow their own personal dreamscapes to emerge—a  place where the sky can be pink, the grass can be blue. Her work is about surrendering to our inherent wildness, our softness, our dreams.