Kathryn Armitage (b. 1994, North Yorkshire, UK) is a London-based figurative painter. 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.

Working from Old Masters, predominantly from the Dutch Golden Age, Armitage abstracts, manipulates, and reclaims these historical works, inserting her own looming, brazen figure into playfully reimagined scenes. Whilst rooted in personal narrative, her identity remains obscured, lending the figures an ambiguous and universal quality. Focusing on the clothed body, Armitage draws on her relationship with fashion — using clothing as both a powerful signifier and a tool for transformation, quite literally playing “dress up” across the canvas.

Although her paintings have a deeply traditional starting point, Armitage takes a playful, contemporary approach to materiality. Glimpses of fluorescent spray paint emerge beneath a predominantly baroque palette, where pigmented washes and untouched canvas are balanced by the gestural, energetic use of chalk pastel. This results in works with a heightened emotional intensity and a feeling of constant motion, blurring the boundaries between the tangible and the imagined.

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