Kathleen Isabella Mackie

Kathleen Isabella Mackie ARUA (22 July 1899 – 8 May 1996) was a painter and an elected Associate of the Ulster Academy of Arts and exhibitor at the Paris Salon. She was a founding member of the Ulster Gliding Club and a friend of pioneering aviator Amy Johnson.

Biography Born Kathleen Isabella Metcalfe in Knock, Belfast, Ireland in 1899, she was the eldest of three children to Arthur Metcalfe and Phoebe Pringle. Mackie attended Richmond Lodge, Belfast, and attended Highcliffe School outside Scarborough for a year before going on to study at Alexandra College, Dublin from 1916 to 1919. In her first year at Alexandra College she came joint first in a competition judged by Sarah Purser and Richard Caulfield Orpen in the Lady Ardilaun Exhibition. She was also selected to design World War I fundraising posters, which were then displayed in Amiens Street Station.

Mackie then returned to Belfast where she took private lessons with Jessie Douglas at Garfield Chambers on Royal Avenue. She entered Belfast School of Art under Alfred Rawlings Baker in 1921 where she remained for two years. Rawlings introduced her to John Lavery, doyen of the Belfast art scene, and after joining her neighbour Joseph Carey's 1910 Sketching Club, she met Frank McKelvey and Percy French amongst many others. The following year Mackie won both the Taylor Award and a British scholarship, which she was to retain for a further two years. In London Mackie worked under William Orpen, Walter Sickert, George Clausen and Sir Gerald Kelly.

From 1922 until 1947 she showed with the Watercolour Society of Ireland upon the encouragement of Eileen Reid, and was also to exhibit less frequently with the Royal Academy and the Royal Hibernian Academy. She supported her husband's work for ex-servicemen's charities which gained him a CBE, as well as local causes such as her place on the hospital committee. and continued to fly until she was in her late seventies. Mackie died in at her home in County Down in 1996. She was survived by her son and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Her works can be found in many private collections and in the diploma collection of the Royal Ulster Academy of Arts.