Kathryn Armitage (b. 1994, North Yorkshire, UK) is a figurative painter based in London. She completed a BA in Painting at Camberwell College of Art in 2016 and an MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art in 2024.

Her work explores gendered power dynamics, challenging conventional notions of femininity and the historical representation of the female body within painting.

Using Dutch Golden Age masters as a point of departure, Armitage creates playful reimaginings of historical imagery through an autobiographical lens. Through a process of fragmentation and assembly, painting becomes a way of navigating interior states — a space in which to rehearse and construct the self, with compositions unfolding like theatrical scenes. Focusing on the clothed body, Armitage draws on her close relationship with fashion, using it not only as a compositional anchor but also as a tool for transformation and projection.

This sense of staging extends to Armitage’s approach to materiality. Thin washes of colour sit alongside more heavily worked passages, while loose pastel markings and areas of raw linen allow the images to shift between clarity and ambiguity. This intentionality reinforces the idea that these paintings operate less as portraits than as fragments — rehearsals for becoming.

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