Artist profile

Kat Wai

Kat Wai is a British artist based in London. She graduated from the University of Edinburgh with a BA in Fine Art in 2024. Working primarily with oils, Kat’s practice explores intimacy, memory, relationships and the quiet, often fleeting moments through which we come to understand ourselves and one another. Her work is rooted in observation and personal experience, drawing from the people, relationships and encounters that surround her. Painting becomes a way of processing emotion and preserving moments that might otherwise disappear. Kat is interested in the feeling that exists within an image: a particular expression, gesture, atmosphere or moment of vulnerability. Her paintings often occupy the space between memory and reality, allowing emotion and recollection to influence the way a subject is represented. Kat paints intuitively and directly, allowing the process of making to remain visible within the finished work. Loose marks, warm earthy tones and layers of oil paint build images that feel both immediate and considered. She is drawn to the imperfections and ambiguities that emerge through this process, seeing them as an important part of conveying the experience of looking and remembering. Across her work, Kat is interested in finding beauty in ordinary encounters and overlooked moments. Whether painting someone close to her or a face belonging to a stranger, her practice is ultimately concerned with the emotional connection created through looking: the intimacy of observing another person and the stories we create from what we see.