Leeds College of Art would like to congratulate their alumna, Katherine Fryer, on her 100th birthday. Katherine has had a long, distinguished career both as an artist - she is an accomplished practitioner of drawing, painting and wood engraving - and as a highly regarded teacher.
Katherine was born in Leeds on 26 August 1910. She could draw before she could walk, and soon displayed the determination and passion for the creative arts that were to propel her throughout her career. She studied at the College from 1926 - 1931 winning the Princess of Wales Scholarship which helped to fund her studies. She reminisces about the soot-clad buildings, and the grime and general darkness that enveloped the city during those years. As a young artist she used to wonder how the French Impressionists were able to create their brightly coloured canvases from urban scenes. The industrial era has, of course, long since been steam-cleaned away, the mines and mills have closed and Leeds has regenerated into the vibrant city and thriving cultural centre it is today.
The College has always been renowned for the high standard of the education it offers its students. Katherine recalls the long, rigorous classes in drawing and the other essential disciplines which then formed the prescribed curriculum. She has always understood and appreciated the benefits of this meticulous training and attributes much of her success to the exacting technical and academic grounding developed at the College. She has, for example, always been able to record a quickly evolving scene without recourse to aids such as the camera. Her training also equipped her with a fine visual memory enabling her also to create works from a remarkably accurate recollection of what she had previously seen. Courses at the College still emphasise the importance of developing skills taught in today’s curriculum as the foundation for generating originality in creative ideas.
During the 1930s and 1940's Katherine taught at Bath School of Art (Corsham) and in the late 1940’s took up a teaching post at Birmingham College of Art. She is remembered fondly by students, many of whom have themselves gone on to have very successful careers. Whilst teaching she continued painting and exhibiting and developed her own distinctive style. She has always travelled widely, drawing and painting as she went. An extended stay in Ireland and the Isle of Aran resulted in a large body of work recording the blue-eyed islanders, abandoned homesteads, donkeys, carts and chunky black boats. This inspired a series of popular works based on her travels. One of the paintings created at this time, 'The Road to Kilmurvey' was hung in the Royal Academy Summer Show in 1958.
In 1969 Katherine was awarded the Hoffman Wood (Leeds) Gold Medal for her painting, 'The Pigeon Show' inspired by drawings from the Bingley Hall livestock show. At this time she was commissioned to undertake a mural –sized painting for the Birmingham Register Office, a work now re-housed at Birmingham’s Millennium Point.
Through the years Katherine has maintained her connections with her Yorkshire roots, continuing to exhibit in Leeds and securing an early solo show in Wakefield where a purchase was made for Leeds Art Gallery.
Katherine is a fine example of how to mature with grace and dynamism. In person she captivates with her humour, lively anecdotes and the facility of her many classical and learned allusions. She is still an active artist and in 2000 held, to both popular and critical acclaim, a solo show, 'One Point of View' in which 72 of her works were exhibited. She will continue to draw and paint for so long as she is able to do so.
Leeds College of Art is proud to have played a part in Katherine's career. She has been, and will continue to be, an inspiration for generations of students.