Kate Boxer was born in Sussex in 1961. In the early 1990s she took classes in London art schools and has exhibited in galleries and at art fairs since 1994.
The film maker Bruno Wolheim has written about her work and her ‘idiosyncratic and deeply felt’ subject matter. He points out how in her cowboy paintings ‘Howard Hawks meets high camp, High Sierra and Frank O’Hara. High fun meets high seriousness.’
Discussing her animal images in paint and print, Wolheim notes their ‘engaging eccentricity’ that comes ‘from a fierce understanding of their innate spirit. The snake, bison, or sand-bird are above all themselves, they express their own independence and individuality, with all the implicit comic tragedy… they are free.’
In June 2013 Cricket Fine Art held an exhibition of Kate's portraits entitled, 'Hello, this is Caesar'.
- David Flusfeder kindly wrote the introduction to Kate's catalogue:
'KATE BOXER has always been a superb depicter of animals, human or otherwise. And the double acts here, where the human half of the pair is the nominal subject, are actually more about the uncredited beast in the pairing and the human’s capacities to share its needs or pleasures. Geronimo can match his horse’s delight in motion and speed. Queen Victoria sits obdurate and statuesque while the elephant who supports her wonders if she can allow herself a little hop and prance and dance. But there is no judgement here: Geronimo is no better or more authentic than Victoria. She is just somewhat lonelier.
These portraits, many of writers, convince entirely. Here’s Proust with his complacency and vanity and terror; and Alice B Toklas allowed at last to be sultry. The butterflies around Joan of Arc's head might be about to convince her of her holiness. The star of the show though is the portrait of the film director Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Looking at Kate Boxer’s portrait of him you can believe that every man gets the face he deserves. His character is there, with its sensuality, neediness, quest for oblivion, intelligence and hurt. One instantly feels, as with Proust, Queen Victoria and Dostoevsky and Gogol and all the others, that we’re being shown who that person was, as well as being introduced to—and this is her great achievement—someone who is about to become our friend.'
As George Melly once described Kate Boxer, she is ‘a remarkable creative spirit: her images and the means to realise them are at one.’