What happens when water becomes a language for the female body?

Katie McGowan presents a new solo exhibition exploring the relationship between women and water, bringing together six years of artistic research into femininity, fluidity and transformation.

The founder of Wavism, McGowan has spent the past six years developing a distinctive visual language that uses flowing waves of oil paint to explore the female form beyond its physical boundaries. Through hundreds of paintings and drawings, she has investigated how water can express something anatomy alone cannot: the feeling of inhabiting a female body.

In these works, water is not simply a backdrop to the woman. It becomes part of her. The boundaries between figure and environment begin to dissolve, with waves acting as both structure and expression - reflecting the cyclical, shifting and often contradictory nature of femininity. Softness meets strength; abstraction meets form; the physical becomes emotional.

Drawing together a body of work developed through years of experimentation, the exhibition offers an intimate look at McGowan’s evolving visual language and the ideas at its core.

It is an exploration of what happens when water becomes more than a subject, becoming a way to understand and express the female experience.