Kate Wooding - Artist, cyclist, strategist

Kate Wooding  is the type of person you want by your side in a crisis because of her ability to listen, give intelligent advice and provide you with tea and cake. A digital strategist by day Kate is also one of the art world's best kept secrets, mainly because she's shy about displaying her paintings, and she dreams of a quieter life in the Scottish countryside. Let me introduce you ....

Growing up I dreamed of being a wildlife game tracker in Africa. I read a huge amount, and I particularly loved a series of books by Willard Price about two brothers who travelled the world collecting animals for their father's zoo and getting into all sorts of scrapes along the way. I loved the idea that some people could track a wild animal and could tell all sorts of amazing things just from the way a blade of grass is bent: “It's a female lioness, and she's eaten recently. She passed this way less than six hours ago, and she's wounded”. Looking back, perhaps I took those books a bit too seriously but it seemed such an amazing skill to have, to be that in tune with nature.

My first job was in a chain of traditional menswear shops called Blazer where I learnt how to fit a gents suit, how to tie various tie knots and all about the rules of traditional dressing. It's a world I've loved ever since, and I still appreciate a proper dapper gent, especially one who can carry off a cravat. 

The best advice I ever got. I don't remember getting great advice, that's not to say that people haven't given me any, but I don't really remember words. I remember what people do more than what they say. So I guess that it's more about people who I admire, and who have done things that have made me think “I'd like to be more like that”. One of the things I most admire is people who go against the grain in order to achieve something that makes them content. I think it can be very difficult to stand out like that, to do something which is personally difficult or discomforting in order to achieve a bigger happiness.

Other people think that I am confident, and in some ways I am. I'm happy to stand up in front of a room full of people, I'm happy to argue my point of view, and I'm happy to introduce myself to someone I've never met. But in other ways I'm much less so. My confidence comes from a strong sense of not letting my insecurities define me, or hold me back. For example, I hate my legs so being on a beach in a bikini is a challenge but I remember when my godson was three we went on holiday to Devon and he loved the beach. And it was so liberating to stop worrying about how I looked, and just to run around jumping in the puddles and shallows with him. OK, no-one offered me a modelling contract but no one ran away screaming either. I don't think anyone was offended at the sight of me. I think they just saw a grown up having a really great time playing with a kid. It put all my insecurity into perspective. OK, so my legs aren't amazing: so what?

I’d be lost without Radio 4. I have it on at home pretty much all the time, and I love the mix of intelligent programmes, comedy, current affairs, drama, and of course The Archers which I've listened since I was fifteen. Obviously, it's no good at keeping me 'down with the kids' but it's brilliant at giving you a tiny insight into a huge range of people and subjects. It's perfect for a magpie mind like mine, especially because if I'm not interested in something, I know there'll be a new programme along in half an hour. I love the way that I can potter around at home (my favourite pastime), doing whatever I'm doing, with the radio on in the background – it doesn't get in the way and take up all of my attention the way that telly does.  I love my own company, and I can be pretty protective of my solitude (I'm a true introvert: being alone is a sanctuary, and I need time to recover after spending too much time with other people), and I think that Radio 4 gives me the stimulation that I need to live happily in my own world.

In the last year I have learned that I find it incredibly hard to make the time to do something that I enjoy. Which sounds crazy: if I enjoy doing it, I ought to want to make the time to do it, right? Instead I find it very difficult to put it ahead of many of the more boring things in life that just need doing. Turns out that I have very little willpower, and can find any number of reasons not to sit down and draw or paint. I know that the thing that would make me a better painter is to do just an hour every day. But I don't seem to be able to fit that in with a busy working life. Sadly, I think that there are no shortcuts, and no magic cures – I'm just going to have to knuckle down and make it happen.

My goal for the future is….. I have two goals for the future, and somehow they are linked in my head, although there's no reason why they have to be. One is to move to somewhere pretty isolated in the beautiful Scottish countryside. The kind of place where I can fall out of bed and head outside in my pyjamas and wellies with a cup of tea to contemplate the day ahead, without frightening the neighbours or becoming known as 'that crazy lady next door'. The second is to paint more. I'm trying to find ways to make both of these happen in a way that doesn't mean I have to live off tinned soup for the rest of my life.

If I could be someone else for the day I would be either Charlotte Green or David Attenborough. Charlotte Green because I have always wanted to read the Shipping Forecast on Radio 4 “Cromarty, Forth, Tyne, Dogger...” and I can't see how else I'm ever going to do that unless I invade her body for a day. It's such a marvellous string of words, it sounds like poetry, and it's different every day. I'd be David Attenborough, back in the days when he was off round the world in safari shorts, because of my childhood ambition to be a wildlife tracker – he's been to some amazing places, and had memorable experiences on his quest to see animals in the wild. That sounds like a great adventure to me.

Got a question for Kate? You'll find her on twitter @Kate_Wooding .

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