Kate Lynda didn't set out to become an oil painter of the sea. She grew up along the coastlines of England and the Channel Islands, and for a while, water was just what she happened to be near, a fascination more than a focus. Then came almost a decade in London's corporate world, where the painting stopped altogether. It wasn't until she moved to Sydney in 2022, and found herself living beside the ocean again, that the pull came back.
That return still shapes how she works.
“My work is inspired by the ocean and its paradoxical power, its ability to feel both calming and commanding, familiar and unpredictable,”
she says. Rather than simply depicting the sea, she wants her paintings to evoke the emotional experience of being near it, a sense of pause, perspective and connection.
She came back to painting because she needed a different pace. Years in a fast-paced corporate environment had left her craving something more instinctive, something that could pull her into a flow state where she could slow down and actually notice what was around her. Over time, that need turned into a practice built on layers, drawing on both observation and memory to chase the shifting colours, reflections and movement of water, and the tension between its stillness and its force.
Two things keep her coming back to the process. One is proximity, because water is her subject, making the work means spending more time by the sea itself, immersing in the environment that inspires her before carrying that feeling back to the studio. The other is patience, specifically the kind oil paint demands. Its slow drying time lets her manipulate and blend colour gradually, so forms merge organically, which she says is essential for capturing the fluid shapes and layered movement that give the surface of the ocean its sense of life.
It's roughly the same advice she'd give anyone starting out. “Don't get swept up in the rat race, especially if you've stepped away from the corporate world because you wanted something different,” she says. “Give yourself the time and space to simply create. Build your body of work slowly, experiment, make things that excite you, and don't let the thing you love become a chore. It's what brought you here in the first place, keep it that way.”
Right now, that means building her second Water Collection, a series of close-up studies of Sydney's eastern beach oceans, which she hopes to exhibit independently in the new year. She's also drawn to new materials, oil paint sticks and pastels in particular, curious about the different texture and depth they might bring to her layered surfaces. She traces a formative moment back to her first invitation to exhibit in a Sydney gallery, a pinch-me moment after months of feeling like she was hovering on the edges of a new creative world.
If she could change one thing about the art world, it wouldn't be about visibility or sales, it would be access. She'd like to see the industry become more welcoming to emerging artists, less dependent on already having a name or a network before you're given the chance to participate. In her experience, there's real value in creating more room for artists who are still finding their feet.
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