More than just a Jewellery Shop…
KATA Jewellery plays host to three exhibitions a year in our Royal Tunbridge Wells Boutique, each showcasing two unique artists from the South East.
Each artist is handpicked, pairing together two which are complementary to each other and yet stand strongly on their own creating a unique interplay between the two.
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Artist’s Archive
View our archive of previous artists who have had exhibitions at KATA Jewellery
‘The depths of nature‘
Our first art exhibition for 2025 brings together Printmaker Judith Westrup and Photographer and Digital Artist Mark Munroe-Preston.
Judith Westrup
Judith Westrup is an entirely self-taught artist who works in the medium of linocut. Before becoming a printmaker, she had a career in Health and Education. Judith finds inspiration in the history of local landscapes, from ancient trees to old trackways to industrial remains. She is also a keen mudlark, a recorder of Ancient Trees and hedgelayer, and this often influences her work. Judith lives with her family and her chickens in Kent, where she prints and teaches from her kitchen studio.
Mark Munroe-Preston
Mark Munroe-Preston is a Photographer and Digital Artist who coalesces photography, painting and collage to create atmospheric pictures inspired by his experiences in nature. Beginning with images drawn from his expansive collection of original landscape photographs, he transforms them, revealing subtleties of colour, texture, light and form, while evoking the natural beauty and drama of the scenes, blurring the boundaries of what is traditionally considered photography and painting. They are presented as limited edition prints on sheets of brushed aluminium, which gives the work a uniquely dynamic look, depth of colour and contemporary feel.
‘Abstract Connections’
Our third art exhibition for 2024 brings together abstract Artist Caroline Martin and abstract Photographer Lena Bruce.
Both artists evoke intrigue and call for participation through their use of ambiguous abstract shapes. Whilst Lena brings us closer to her subject matter leading viewers to question and interpret, Caroline’s fluid brush strokes connect us to her expression of self.
Caroline Martin
Abstract Artist Caroline Martin draws influence from the natural forms that have surrounded her over the course of her life. From her childhood growing up in Botswana, the natural textures which emerge at the coast and fluid movement of water itself is a consistent theme in Caroline’s work.
Describing her approach as ‘intuitive’ painting for Caroline is an immersive sensory experience. She focuses intensely for lengthy periods of time whilst listening to music; letting the song carry her to a creative zone as she translates her experience of natural forms onto the blank canvas.
This sensory element comes across in the fluid movement of her broad brush strokes and her abrupt staccato watercolour ink splatters from which a sense of rhythm is derived. Extending this sensory immersion to the eyes of the viewer, Caroline’s use of bright white strokes layered behind bold black ones alongside the refined application of neon paint and copper leaf evoke visual intrigue. Texture is achieved through layering different consistencies of acrylic paint and watercolor based ink. Adding yet another layer of moving texture when it comes to her framed work, she chooses to use reflective glass.
Now calling East Sussex her home Caroline Martin regularly exhibits at art exhibitions across South East England and has built relationships with clients and collectors from Singapore to the Isle of White.
Lena Bruce
The photographic art created by Lena Bruce is textural and detailed, immediately eye-catching and captivating. Lena’s work focuses on the intensely beautiful details found within nature. Her images bring us incredibly close to her subjects, reveling in the textures and forms that are only captured when one draws in close, looking beyond the big picture to the beauty within. The result is compelling images that offer intrigue and illusion.
From the very action of capturing her images through to post-production editing, printing and framing. Lena has full control of her creative process from beginning to end, working from her garden studio to create high quality limited edition photographic prints.
‘Natural Impressions’
Our second art exhibition for 2024 unites the exquisite oil paintings of floral focused Sophie M Cook and the vibrant landscapes and cloudscapes of Hannah Buchanan.
Both artists feature impressions of nature in their work, their portrayals allow us to take a step back and appreciate the natural world for what it is; a thing of beauty.
Sophie M Cook
A Tunbridge Wells local, Sophie M Cook works in oils and is best known for her floral paintings.
Never painting from photographs of flowers, Sophie works only with seasonal blooms. The subjects of her painting change depending on which flowers are out in her garden. Only working with fresh flowers, her subject matter is very fleeting, giving a nod to the fragility and transience of the natural world around us.
Each study is different as Sophie responds to the changes in light and how that affects the hues in her colour palette. Using perfectly considered tonal ranges of colour to capture and explore the complexity of her garden’s natural forms. Painting with an absence of harsh lines and edges, the essence of what makes a rose a rose is captured with an almost ethereal quality.
Hannah Buchanan
Beautifully capturing the delicacy of the Kentish countryside, Hannah Buchanan works from her greenhouse studio in her garden in Biddenden. Each of her paintings is based on a study done on location, with the final piece being painted in the studio.
Hannah’s paintings leads us to find calm and solitude. Her scenes disconnect the viewer from the business of life. Calm still waters, lush countryside and open skies bring us into those quiet places in nature where we can all feel at peace.
KATA has curated a wonderful mix of Hannah’s landscape scenes and her cloudscapes, reminding us of the tranquil summer days we all long for.
‘People observed, a unique perspective’
Our first art exhibition for 2024 unites the artwork of Frances Featherstone and Frederique Bellec.
Frances Featherstone
Frances Featherstone is an award-winning artist who works predominantly in oil paints. Guided by an appreciation for storytelling, narratives serve at the heart of her work, with which she seeks to fill her paintings with ideas and conceptual depth.
At present, her creative explorations revolve around the interplay between figures and interior spaces, offering viewers a window into our intimate emotions that are entangled with the spaces that we occupy.
She has found in her work that the ordinary can become fascinating by simply changing the perspective. She employs aerial perspectives to craft patterns seen from above that compress and flatten the spatial dimensions. These pieces venture beyond the constraints of conventional perception and seek to challenge our normal sense of space.
Frederique Bellec
Frederique Bellec is a self-taught photographer based in London who started her artistic and photographic journey on the streets of London, capturing the everyday and the mondane.
From pure street photography, Frederique’s work evolved to focus more intensely on the interplay of shadow, light and colour against the backdrop of the urban environment. Her photographs aim to find harmony between the human and the concrete hard structures of the city. The human stories of the city are elegantly framed by straight lines and towering structures as well as the vibrant artificial light of the urban environment., resulting in images with a graphical quality.
The urban is her natural visual language, and she finds beauty and visual harmony in the human-built rather than the natural world.
