About Kate Downie

Kate is best known for her paintings of urban and industrial landscapes but has always harboured a passion for trees. This is evident in her limited edition screen print of the Garden’s wych elm – when it was still alive – which she made in 1994, as part of a project to light up the windows of the Edinburgh City Council offices on George IV Bridge. Sadly, this single drawing is all that seems to have survived from the project. Fourteen years later, inspired by the Wych Elm Project, she returned to the area to draw wild seedlings, direct descendants of the original tree, which had established themselves among the bramble and bamboo of the Chinese Hillside.