A woman stands holding a red banner with the words: 'Something as small as a wish can root and breathe the peat alive again'

Kate Foster

I am an ecosocial artist based in Southern Scotland. Over the last twenty years I have initiated interdisciplinary projects to create dialogue about animal extinction, land use, and ecological restoration.  These have included Biogeographies (2005), Working the Tweed (2013) and Peat Cultures (2016 ongoing).  Since 2020, I began to develop insights into Peat Cultures in the Netherlands as well.  Alongside this commitment to peatland restoration, I am now also focussing on peat-free ecological gardening.  I am affiliated to grassroots organisations, universities and museums, working on both socially-engaged and studio-based projects.

My artwork takes a different form depending on its specific context, and this influences which media I use.  I like to find new ways to thread visual artwork into non-art settings.  Field-drawing is my favourite way to research a topic and I enjoy making small sculptures from found materials. The Peat Cultures project has led to many online presentations; I have exhibited internationally and produced peer-reviewed publications as well as artists’ books, commissioned illustrations, zines, and drawings for animation.

I am most content outdoors, making a foraging garden for myself and other creatures and working things out while walking.

Online: https://linktr.ee/katefoster

A drawing of a leatherback turtle

This studio drawing Dedication to PTT ID 56280 illustrates themes of extinction and time in Encountering Leatherbacks in Multispecies Knots of Time, a book chapter by Michelle Bastian. It is  published in Extinction Studies, Stories of Time, Death and Generations, edited by Deborah Bird Rose, Thom van Dooren and Matthew Chrulew. Columbia University Press, 2015 (pp 149-186).

An image of sphagnum moss laid over a drawing with the words 'mending the blanket'

Mending the Blanket, a series of artworks about restoration work in remote places, celebrates regenerating the living layer of peatlands. This is a detail of a Zine flier for a collaborative animation with sound artist, pantea.

A woman smiles at the camera. She is next to large soil samples. To her left is a noticeboard with paper and books attached to it.

Kate Foster in the World Soil Museum (NL) next to Dutch peat profiles from the collection on one hand, and outcomes of a workshop inviting creative responses on the other.

A woman stands holding a red banner with the words: 'Something as small as a wish can root and breathe the peat alive again'

This banner was made for Sphagnum Splat, an outdoor family event at a peatland restoration site. The text is by poet Jos Smith and the event was held with the Galloway Glens Landscape Partnership in collaboration with the Crichton Carbon Centre in 2019. 

A collage of words on a post showing a Netherlands skyline. The words read: HOME IS WHERE THE COMPOST IS

I made this collage on a Dutch cultural integration pack to express how, for me, home is where I can make my own compost.

A woman wearing glasses and dressed in a dark rain coattastes a tree bud. She

Field drawing and foraging in Southern Scotland, tasting a larch bud. Photo credit Ann Louise Kieran.

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