They say creativity runs in families and so too, a love of gardening. Kate Corbett-Winder is a celebrated British landscape and still-life artist who favours nature as her subject, and also happens to be Willow's mother.

"I usually paint in my studio where all my materials and art books live. It’s a favourite space and I feel at home once I’m in there - though in the summer I do decamp to the greenhouse with an easel to paint the geraniums." says Kate, and on the merging of her two great loves of gardening and painting, she says "they became properly entwined around 2016 when I married the two passions and did a series of garden paintings which were the focus of my third London show. Before then I had treated the art and garden as separate  - but as I’m endlessly rearranging the borders,  experimenting with colour and shape  - I recognised that it was a similar process to working out a painting."

Leaving Vogue House in Mayfair - where she worked as a writer and stylist in her 20s, for the Welsh marshes as a newlywed, Kate embarked on a journey where nature provided the backdrop for artistic exploration. While quite a transition for the budding city editor to the vast rural grounds of her new husband's family estate, Kate continued to work as a freelance editor. In fact - while raising three young children, Kate not only maintained her writing but grew her career - regularly contributing to glossy lifestyle magazines and becoming an author of several fashion and interior tomes. 

At the same time, Kate's passion for gardening was developing at a rapid rate - at first, through wonderful stories of trial and error in the cottage garden where her young family first lived, then to the expansive grounds of the estate, which she came to love, nurture and manage through the seasons until today. Inspired by the surrounding flora and landscape, Kate began to paint the beauty around her - initially using watercolours, pastels and a sketchbook at home and on her travels to the Scilly Isles and further afield. In the last decade, Kate’s love of painting and gardens has collided - her passions have become her profession, with her work being welcomed by galleries, curators and collectors alike.  

'Colour Field', Kate's upcoming exhibition (opening 23rd February) and her second with Long & Ryle in London reveals a bolder more abstract direction using collage, oil bar and graphite drawing over the painted surface; inspired by artists such as de Stael, Keith Vaughan and Patrick Heron.

Here we chat with Kate about her love of gardens and painting; her exhibition launching this month; and we learn about the passion she shares, and has passed on to Willow, for nature as the canvas for artistic expression...

You wrote several books, many associated with Vogue - More Dash Than Cash, Even More Dash Than Cash, Laura Ashley Living Rooms, The Barn Book et al - please can you tell us more about your years as an author, editor and contributor to House & Garden, The World of Interiors and many more? 
Writing as a freelance was a perfect way to transition from London to the middle of Wales. When I left Vogue I had a commission to write the first More Dash Than Cash book, it felt quite surreal writing that looking over fields of sheep -  and I also contributed to Country Matters pages which gave me a lovely reason to explore and find creative people and original shops to write about.  In the early 80s, there was a burgeoning of artisan crafts and small businesses that made me realise London wasn’t the epicentre of life! And the Laura Ashley HQ were down the road, so I started writing some of their catalogues and then a book for them called Laura Ashley Living Rooms. I also wrote the Barn Book and became a freelance writer with articles on interiors and gardens for House & Garden, The World of Interiors, Country Living and Architectural Digest. 

Are you still writing and could there be a book in the future? 
No, I can’t see another book on the horizon, but never say never. Meanwhile, I love helping Willow with her books. 

Your love of gardens and gardening seems inherent. Has it been ever present from when you were young? 
I had a peripatetic childhood, so my love of gardening began soon after I married and moved to mid-Wales. I was helped by a green-fingered gardener friend who helped me lay out and plant two large borders in a virgin lawn  -   roses were chomped by straying sheep and pesky rabbits, tulips were decapitated by the wind but I became rapidly hooked and have been passionate about plants and gardening ever since.   

The gardens at your home in Wales are vast and impressive - what is your focus on managing the gardens there through the seasons? 
It is a much more sheltered established garden, so I was happy to have had some experience in a cottage garden before taking it on.   It’s a quintessential country house terraced garden with protective walls, a box-edged  parterre and large herbaceous borders that I have replanted several times (once after Willow and Charles's wedding when the marquee sat over the crushed down flowers  - it seemed a good plan in February was felt quite a rash one by September!) I try and keep the borders going from Spring until the dahlias are struck by frost.    

We have experimented with a prairie-style lawn the last two summers, letting wildflowers emerge in long grass beside the formal herbaceous borders. Quite liberating not to have the mower powering away all summer.  

There's a lull in the winter when physically there isn’t so much maintenance but the bare months do show up the bones of the garden and how there needs to be shape and scent to close to the house;  clipped topiary, winter honeysuckles, snowdrops and tulips emerging from pots and dolly tubs.  Once plants start to emerge I am thrilled to get in the borders to tweak and move plants around before they grow too much.

When did you start to paint?  And when did you realise this could become both a passion and a profession? 
I have always painted, but while I was writing it was something I did on holidays. - usually watercolour and pastel in sketchbooks - and for many years every Wednesday I would drive miles to paint with a group of friends taught by Fiona MacAlpine. We had the happiest time and I would come home, inspired to go on painting. I also went on courses, rediscovering my amazing teacher from school, Robin Child who encouraged me to think that I could be a serious painter. And I started selling my paintings on Tresco in the gallery - some of the early ones are still hanging in the holiday cottage which I can just about recognise!

Your love of gardening and painting appear to be entwined and inform one another. Can you tell us more about this? 
Yes, they became properly entwined around 2016 when I married the two passions and did a series of garden paintings which were the focus of my third London show. Before then I had treated the art and garden as separate  - but as I’m endlessly rearranging the borders,  experimenting with colour and shape  - I recognised that it was a similar process to working out a painting.  

Your favourite place to paint? 
I usually paint in my studio where all my materials and art books live. It’s a favourite space and I feel at home once I’m in there - though in the summer I do decamp to the greenhouse with an easel to paint the geraniums - one of the largest pictures in the colour Field exhibition, Greenhouse, was painted in there, though I could hardly see around the canvas!  On holiday I always take paints and a sketchbook and sometimes those scribbles become paintings, but often they are just a visual diary of a time and place abroad.

Please tell us about your upcoming exhibition, 'Colour Field’, with Long & Ryle …is there a shift from previous work in terms of style and materials used?
The subject matters are familiar; landscape, flowers, nature - but I think these are more abstract than before, built up with thinner washes of colour and more drawing into the image.  There are several families which I hope will relate once they hang in the gallery -  abstract aerial works inspired by flying to the Scilly isles last winter with some Montgomeryshire landscapes on wooden boards and a collection of still life with flowers, plants and the garden here painted last summer and autumn.  

Can you tell us about some of your favourite painters and artists? 
I love the early and mid-20th century in British art -  especially Christopher Wood, Ben & Winifred Nicholson, Keith Vaughan, Peter Lanyon, Patrick Heron - and am inspired by the American abstract artists Richard Diebenkorn and Joan Mitchell who had an influence on my garden paintings. 

If you could buy one painting in the world, what would it be? 
It would have to be a Matisse.  The Open Window at Collioure would make me very happy.