Kate McLeod is a full-time mixed media artist based in Ilam, Ōtautahi Christchurch. McLeod has exhibited widely throughout Aotearoa and held in private collections in NZ, USA and the UK and was awarded the Winsor and Newton Prize for creative use of materials at the Auckland Art Show in 2022. McLeod paints in a wide range of mediums including oil, acrylic, resin, pigments, metal leaf and hand crafts all her timber frames. 

Following her graduation in 2005 from Canterbury University (BA, Art History and Sociology), McLeod’s life twisted and turned, with jobs as a TV set designer, art teacher, advertising account manager, creative software executive and restoration project manager giving her licence to explore a wide range of creative disciplines. 

Her current gestural, lyrical abstraction focuses on being attuned to the rhythms of life. Her work is imbued with a sense of immediate, fluid movement that invites an emotional response from her audience. Grounded by her deep fascination with colour, each work is a performance that captures a fleeting moment, a memory of a feeling.