KATE Walters will launch her new exhibition, A World Revealed, at the New School House Gallery, Peasholme Green, York, this evening from 6pm.

The Penzance artist draws on aspects of myth, shamanism, Jungian collective unconscious and lucid dreaming in her unashamedly mystical and uncompromisingly female art.

“Kate focuses on the ‘surfacing impulses’ of the ancient feminine wisdom principle sometimes known as Sophia,” says gallery co-director Robert Teed. “She explores feelings around the body – her own body and animal bodies – and how she learns about the world through all her senses.

“As Kate has put it, ’I see that we are all connected, that boundaries are subtle, fluid; I see that a superimposition can occur’.”

Kate’s artistic practice involves “working with the living net of creation that I feel extends to all species and all phenomena”. She prefers to use watercolour, gum arabic and graphite drawing as media on a gesso-prepared surface that is smooth yet durable, while the watercolour is fluid, rapid, delicate and easily changed. “It’s a responsive, living, feminine medium; perfect for my task,” she says.

“I’m interested in asking for the vision, strength and perceptive gifts of various animals and plants; for example, climbing inside the belly of a horse one can ask to be 'cooked' by the inward heat, and gain the gift of learning the steady focus for this life.”

Many of the works in A World Revealed have sprung from dreaming. “For many years, I’ve experienced vivid and instructive dreams,” says Kate. “These serve as a commentary and guide to my waking world and to my work as an artist. If I’m in doubt about a certain path, they will give me pointers or warnings.”

Robert comments: “By bringing some of the imagery or core ideas of these dreams into her practice, Kate’s art can easily be seen as that of the modern-day visionary.”

Kate’s enthusiasm for hill walking is another indirect source of inspiration. “I love being on the tops of mountains, where you can see huge hares and eagles, you can pass over valleys of bees and thin forests; there will be spiky shiny flowers with no stems growing, the backs of their faces pressed into the thin soil,” she says.

“These are fine but lonely places; no one goes there, much. You feel as if you can step into another world, and not come back. I love the feeling of balance, of being on the edge of something.”

The art critic Laura Gascoigne has noted how Kate Walters’ imagery walks the line between pain and hope. “It's this sense of trembling on the brink of transformation that lends Walters’ shadowy forms psychological substance,” she wrote. “Besides them, Tracey Emin's drawings look like idle scratching.”

A World Revealed will run until April 26.