MY COUNTRY BUSINESS
Artist Kate Nicole
Botanical artist Kate Nicol draws inspiration from Suffolk
Based in the heart of Suffolk, Kate Nicole creates botanical paintings, influenced by the local landscape, featuring silhouettes of cow parsley, dandelions, hydrangeas, alliums and ferns. Framed in old French frames, the paintings exude a chic simplicity and a muted, faded palette – a trademark style now synonymous with Kate’s flourishing business, Oyster Bridge & Co. Complementing her one-off pieces is a beautiful collection of hand-painted cards, hand-cut garlands and delicately written gift tags, poems and sayings.
‘Creativity has always been part of my life,’ she says. ‘I grew up in Suffolk, in homes bursting with inspiration – my parents own a decorative homeware business, Rosehip in the Country, and were always coming back from trips to France with unusual brocante finds and interesting antiques; and Mum would make special pieces out of old fabrics. She instilled a love of creating in me.’
Kate studied A Level Art and completed a one-year Art Foundation in Fashion and Textiles. ‘I always intended to go to university, but by the end of the course I wanted to go off and explore.’ At 18, Kate booked a one-way ticket to New Zealand, spending a year working and travelling before moving to Australia for two years, where she worked planting trees in the rainforest and as a snorkelling guide where whale sharks and manta rays kept her company on the Ningaloo Reef. ‘I fell in love with a place called Oyster Bridge and would spend hours sketching and taking photos – never imagining that it would inspire the name of my future business.
‘In Australia, I lived in a caravan in Coral Bay and made friends with another creative. We set up a screenprinting area in my caravan, designing and making our own stencils to print on to T-shirts. We sold these to locals and passing travellers, as they stopped by to enjoy the reef.’
After two further trips, working in the Seychelles and on a remote Scottish island, Kate returned home. ‘It was a hard phase, and I knew that I needed to settle down and work out which direction I wanted to go in. On the way home from the airport, we stopped in a local town and Mum pointed