You are
the stars
the moon
all light
You shine so bright
by your side
I never fear the night
Poem by Jina Khayyer, 2023
Sim Smith is delighted to present Kate Groobey’s latest exhibition with the gallery, I’m A Big Star. The exhibition explores emotions that cut across individual experience, like awe, success, joy, tenderness, adoration, and desire. Her work depicts the body, the primary site through which the world is felt and known. The recurring figure in Groobey’s paintings is her wife, but rather than functioning as recognisable portraits, they embody inner landscapes and shared emotional states.
After several years working with more process-driven techniques, including dripping and pouring paint, Groobey’s latest oil paintings mark a return to the brush. This shift brings renewed emphasis to gesture and touch. The brush operates as an extension of her hand and arm — a tool to feel and think, and to map internal sensations onto the canvas.
“When I paint with brushes, I often stand on the canvas to feel a close connection between my body and the surface. Footmarks appear in older paintings, but in this series I allow all marks —from my foot, brush, drip, palette knife, or even an insect — if they work, I leave them. They become part of the mark-making language.”
— Groobey, 2026
Alongside the large oils, the exhibition presents a series of Groobey’s watercolours. Foundational to her practice, many begin as small note-to-self ink drawings and are later developed into watercolours, some of which are translated into oil paintings.
The place in which Groobey paints has a decisive impact on her work. This series was made en plein air in the south of France, where many of her artistic heroes — Picasso, Matisse, Cézanne, and Van Gogh — lived and worked. The energy of nature shapes the paintings, while motifs such as stars, moons, cherries, and water emerge across the series.
“It’s not about observing nature like the Impressionists. Its energy moves through me — light, wind, heat, the movement of trees and grass — shaping the rhythm of my brushstrokes, my colour, my bodily sensations as I paint. Sometimes it enters more directly, wind blows soil and leaves onto the canvas or raindrops land in the paint.”
— Groobey, 2026
Photo by Elfie Semotan.
