Two Kats and a Cow: Beachfront talent
Two Kats and a Cow celebrate 10 years at the their beachfront Brighton gallery
The artists that are two Kats and a Cow are Katty McMurray, Kathryn Matthews and John Marshall and for the last ten years they have had a major presence in the arches below Kings Road on Brighton seafront. Brought together more from a desire to share a working and gallery space than from a common creative thread, they had gone on to be one of the most successful businesses in the beach quarter.
Over the years they have all three moved away to work in their own studio spaces leaving the arch as a permanent gallery space. At the same time they had developed a strong list of patrons and collectors who love their work, not only here but when they exhibit in London and across the rest of the country.
While the two Kats create exquisite canvases and drawings depicting seaside, coastal and rural scenes, John continues with his fascination for creatures of the bovine ilk. Each has their own style and their collective shows always offer an exciting variety of paintings that have a broad appeal.
To celebrate their tenth anniversary they are having a Festival Exhibition in which they will all be showing new works. And rather then try to describe them, I will stop now and let the pictures themselves tell their own story.
Two Kats and a Cow, 167 Kings Road Arches, Brighton Beach. Call 01273 776746 www.twokatsandacow.com. The Festival Exhibition runs throughout May and is open every weekend from 11am to 5pm.
Katty McMurray
Katty studied at Chelsea School of Art and, after graduating, moved to Brighton where she continues to paint from her seafront studio. As well as British coastal scenes she also draws widely from her travels depicting diverse locations like Zanzibar, China, India and Italy. Whilst on location she produces sketches, often a single line, which later in the studio she uses as the basis for her larger paintings in oil on canvas.
Kathryn Matthews
Kathryn studied at Deva Art School in Holland and Montfort University in Leicester. She is fascinated by the vibrancy of harbour and port side scenes and in particular with the British coastline. She paints in oil on board, building thin layers of paint and glazes that give her work a fresh and luminous quality.
John Marshall
John has no formal training as a fine artist and it would seem he was the last to know that he was one. He is, however, extremely popular and well collected and his imposing images of livestock have a gentle charm and humour beneath their sometimes monumental scale. Starting with broad brushstrokes in black oil paint on canvas he fills out the light and the shade with a two foot long brush. Only then does he start to create the image using a palette knife and a week later glazes.
