Kathryn Williams lights a new creative spark

It had been far too long since I’d last sat down for a proper natter with Kathryn Williams… but within half an hour she’d done her usual trick of inspiring me to get off my arse and start doing some of the things I’ve been thinking about doing.

Having tipped happily into her 50s, the Liverpudlian singer – who made Newcastle her home when she arrived more than 30 years ago to study art – is still tugging on every interesting thread life dangles in front of her.

It’s fair to say that for Kathryn, creativity is less a career than a state of being.

Since the late nineties, she has released 17 albums (earning a Mercury Music Prize nomination for 2000’s Little Black Numbers), written a novel (The Ormering Tide, 2021), hosted a podcast (Before the Light Goes Out) and collaborated with songwriters and singers across Europe and beyond.

Now, another longstanding strand of her artistic life is getting due attention.

On Friday (May 8), Kathryn opens her first solo North East exhibition at The Biscuit Factory in the heart of Ouseburn.

Striking Image comprises tiny, expressive portraits painted onto matchboxes. The works are playful, intimate and political; miniature portraits reimagined not on ivory or precious materials, but on something we could probably all find in that kitchen drawer.

“I love the idea of miniatures from historical times,” Kathryn tells me over a pair of cuppas ahead of the exhibition launch event, which is part of the Ouseburn-focused Friday programme for after-hours culture crawl, The Late Shows.

“They were often on ivory or bone and gilded and only really for the upper class. I loved the idea of making miniatures on something so household as a matchbox.”

It is classic Kathryn Williams: thoughtful, subversive and completely without pretension.

When we meet earlier in the day, Kathryn has yet to see the exhibition installed. Later, climbing the stairs towards the gallery, she admits to feeling flutter- but any nerves disappear the moment she sees her miniature portraits assembled together on the walls for the first time.

“They look good, don’t they?” she beams. “I love seeing them in here.”

The Newcastle exhibition follows her debut solo art show earlier this year at Start Yard in Birkenhead.

“I’ve been painting more and more and more,” she says. “And it was amazing to see my paintings up on the walls – there were watercolours alongside the matchboxes. It was a real learning curve because I’ve always been creating without thinking of anything as a product.”

It’s clear that distinction matters deeply. Whether writing songs, novels or making paintings, Kathryn insists the creative process must begin free from expectation.

“I don’t have the listener in mind when I’m making music and I don’t think about someone else’s eyes when I’m making art,” she says. “There has to be a time where you’ve got freedom and nobody looking over your shoulder.”

That philosophy has underpinned the aforementioned – and quite remarkable – body of work. Since releasing her debut album Dog Leap Stairs – whose cover artwork she painted herself – Kathryn has built a widely respected career in British songwriting.

She describes her latest album, Mystery Park (also sporting an original Williams cover artwork), which she toured extensively through late 2025 and early this year, as her “most personal” record to date.

But despite everything she has achieved, she still talks about creativity as something to keep learning from, rather than something she has mastered

“I just don’t ever want to be sitting on my laurels,” she says. “I always want to feel like a beginner again.”

Many times during our conversation, she returns to the idea of the beginner’s mind. She refers to Joni Mitchell and her description of creativity as “crop rotation” – moving between disciplines so one form nourishes another.

For Kathryn, painting feeds songwriting. Songwriting feeds writing. Touring feeds watercolours. Even gardening becomes part of the same instinctive cycle of making.

“Creatives don’t really have a rest,” she laughs. “They just do a different creative thing. Thirty years of making a living from creating things is a thing of joy.”

Her paintings often happen in the margins of music. On tour, she carries watercolours and handmade Italian paper, seeking out galleries and museums between gigs. During less hectic periods at home in Newcastle where she lives with her husband and two teenage sons, she draws or paints almost every day.

If you follow her on Instagram, you’ll get to see the occasional artwork as well as hear a steady stream of original songs and covers performed live.

“Sometimes I’ll just stick the drawing in the fire if it’s shit,” she smiles as she shrugs. “But I’ve always learned something from it.”

The matchbox portraits themselves emerged from touring life too. Inspired by an artist friend who doubled as an on-the-road companion last year, Kathryn began experimenting with the tiny canvases while travelling.

The resulting works sit somewhere between portraiture and abstraction: faces half-emerging from loose brushstrokes, familiar yet slippery.

“There’s a point where I feel like their essence is there,” she explains, “but it could fall apart within the paint.”

The subjects range from people she knows to historical figures. Each portrait is eventually given a new name, allowing the painting to become something independent.

“It’s playful,” she says. “It’s nice for them to be their own thing. Not someone else.”

But beneath the playfulness lies sharper commentary too.

Kathryn speaks passionately about the historic dismissal of women’s creativity, especially work created in domestic spaces.

“I wanted to subtly work with that idea,” she says. “You know, women historically haven’t had studios or space or time. So using something household felt important. It’s a piece of art. But you can also open it when the end of time comes. You can smash the glass and start a fire.”

The launch night promises to feel more like a celebration than a formal opening and is likely to be one of the busiest stops on The Late Shows roster.

Kathryn’s friend and Maxïmo Park front man Paul Smith will DJ from 6pm before she performs a short live set among the paintings later in the evening.

Music and art collapsing into one another inside a gallery in the part of Newcastle that has long thrived on creative cross-pollination. Seems about spot on.

Meanwhile Kathryn, as ever, is already thinking ahead to the next thing. There are new songs emerging in unfamiliar guitar tunings. A half-finished collaborative album with Michele Stoddart (of The Magic Numbers) waiting to be completed. Ideas for songwriter circle tours. More paintings. More experiments.

At one point she tells me about accidentally discovering that a song she co-wrote had appeared in the Oscar-winning film Sentimental Value – only realising weeks later after enthusiastically recommending the film to friends.

There is something wonderfully revealing in that story. Even now, after decades of recognition, Kathryn still seems less interested in achievement than in curiosity itself.

“We’re only here once,” she says as we start packing things up. “We’ve just got to do what takes us forward – never stop learning.”

And with that, I said my goodbyes and headed home to blow the cobwebs off my Discomfort Zone to do list.

Kathryn Williams: Striking Images opens at The Biscuit Factory, in the Ousebirn as part of The Late Shows on May 8. It will run until July 5 (subject to sale of works).