Linda Kitson in-conversation with William Feaver

Linda Kitson studied at St. Martin’s School of Art and the Royal College of Art. She first drew significant public attention as an official war artist, accompanying the British Task Force to the Falkland Islands. Subsequent ventures, such as those to Canada and to Thailand, produced suites of drawings that still had an aspect of reportage. Kitson also had successful exhibitions of landscape drawings, generally produced by ‘clinging to the side of a mountain’ in France and Italy. For someone who has been, as she describes it, ‘a line draughtsman all my life’, she has embraced the latest technology which allows her to have a wealth of colour at her fingertips. With it she is now exploring ways of depicting the drama of city architecture. ‘Drawing in the middle of cities’, she says, ‘is a totally new world’. ‘The iPad changes everything. You can be anywhere, bus stops, traffic jams, building sites. The whole collection of ‘tools’ is in your hands.’ With the ceaseless and dramatic demolition and construction, there can never have been a more exciting time to be drawing in towns. ‘It’s as if I’ve only just begun the business of looking at life again, and found so many new ways of describing it.’