Katharine Holmes (b. 1962) is best known for her paintings and drawings of her native Yorkshire landscape. A graduate of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne she returned in 1990 to live and work in the Yorkshire Dales.

She paints outside in all weathers and currently works from her studio at the Malham cottage where her mother and grandmother lived and painted before her. In June 2009 an exhibition was held at Leeds University of paintings and drawings as part of a large retrospective exhibition, “A Malham Family of Painters”.

Beyond home and the familiar Katharine Holmes paints the wilder fringes of Britain and Ireland especially the Highlands and Islands of Scotland and South West Cornwall. Widely exhibited and collected her work is in many private and corporate collections. Katharine has exhibited in solo and in themed exhibitions at Gavagan Art in recent years.

Fascinated by the effects of light the paintings are as much about atmosphere as they are about the physical features of the landscape. Working in a range of media from ink, watercolour and gouache on paper to oil or acrylic on canvas. In the words of Norman Adams RA. who taught Katharine at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne:

It is not so much that Katharine Holmes makes statements about her native landscape as that she is constantly questioning and trying to discover its essence. Then she tries to fuse her materials to her subject-matter, by means of emotional understanding, and they become one.