Kate Bell 'Simbiosis'

11 - 30 April 2025

Open Event Saturday 12 April between 1-3pm​

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‘Simbiosis’ is a new exhibition of paintings by Kate Bell inspired by her recent travels to Costa Rica celebrating its incredibly diverse climate and habitat. Moved by her experience in the rainforests she has created a series of seven large paintings in response to the wonderfully atmospheric music of Manuel Obregon, a Costa Rican composer who recorded a series of seven piano compositions in the rainforests. Entitled ‘Simbiosis’ he celebrates and highlights the fragile diversity of this extraordinary climate through his music. These paintings are an emotional response to place and a celebration of the biodiversity of this country. In paying tribute to the natural world, it reminds us to slow down and helps us reconnect with nature acknowledging the impact of climate change on all our lives.

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Kate Bell is a painter living and working in Mumbles, Swansea. Much of the inspiration for her colourful abstract and semi abstract landscapes aim to capture the essence and the energy of place. evoking the feelings and atmosphere associated with a particular location rather than reproducing a direct interpretation.

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Her work responds to landscape, through experience, myth, and legend. She is fascinated by combining art forms, responding to both music and poetry through line, colour, texture and shape. She works from sketches and paintings both in the environment but also through memory and imagination back in the studio.

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She studied Fine Art and English in Canterbury and has an MA in Fine Art from Swansea College of Art, UWTSD, for which she received a Distinction. She has taught in both Secondary and Higher Art Education and has been a Lead Creative Arts Agent for the Arts Council of Wales. and Events Organiser for the Friends of the Glynn Vivian from 2016 -2022. She is also a member of the Welsh Women’s Art Association and the VAA and co-founder of The Mumbles Art Collective.

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Kate has had several solo and group exhibitions in Wales and London and has works in private collections in the UK, the USA, New Zealand and Australia. She was invited to exhibit in The Exhibition of Contemporary Welsh Painting in 2019 and was awarded First prize at Queen Street Gallery, where she had a solo show in February 2020, and again in July 2022. She been shortlisted for the RWA and the VAA, and more recently was selected for the Royal Cambrian Academy of Art for their Open Exhibition 2025. She currently has a studio at Elysium Artist Studios, Mansel Street, Swansea.