KATHLEEN Isabella Mackie (nee Metcaffe) who died at her home in Co Down on May 8th, 1996, in her 97th year was an Irish artist whose distinction came to public notice only towards the end of a long life spent largely in the domestic traditions of her generation. Her one woman exhibition at the Ulster Museum this year showed oils, drawings and watercolours reflecting all the versatility and verve of her personality.
Kathleen Mackie was born in Knock, Belfast, in 1899. She was educated at Richmond Lodge and Alexandra College, Dublin, where her artistic talent was first recognised by Lady Ardilaun, Richard Caulfield Orpen and Sarah Purser. She was chosen to design posters which were displayed at Amiens Street Station as part of the fund raising 1914-18 war effort.
In 1920, when studying at the Belfast School of Art, she was introduced to Sir John and Lady Lavery who were in Belfast for the annual exhibition of the Belfast Art Society of which Sir John was president. She became a member of J. W. Carey's "1910 Sketching Club" and in 1921 submitted works for the Royal Dublin Society's Taylor Art Awards, winning a prize which led to her admission to the Royal Academy Schools in London. In 1922 she again submitted her work and won both the prestigious Taylor Award and, later, a British Institution scholarship which she held in all for a period of three years. Up until 1924 she studied under William Orpen, W. R. Sickert, George Clausen d Sir Gerald Kelly.
She exhibited regularly from 1920 until 1959 at the Belfast Art Society, which later became the Ulster Academy of Arts and, later still, the Royal Ulster Academy. Her oil painting entitled The Market was exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1926-7. She also exhibited at the Royal Academy, the Royal Hibernian Academy and the Watercolour Society of Ireland from 1922 until 1947. She married Jack Mackie of James Mackie & Sons in 1926 and took up gliding with other family members in 1927, an activity which culminated in the founding of the Ulster Gliding Club and a friendship with Amy Johnston.
Always unassuming as an artist, her duties as the wife of a senior industrialist and mother of three sons gradually turned her into a "holiday painter", notably of landscapes and life in Donegal. In 1936 she was elected an Associate of the Ulster Academy and to mark the occasion presented her Salon picture, The Market, to the academy for its diploma collection. Her desire to contribute during the war involved her for many years in hospital committee work and afterwards in support for her husband, then chairman of the Lord Roberts Workshops, for which he was created CBE. Her contribution to the fund raising Gaytime Bazaar was legendary.
It was not until she was 86 that she was given her first one woman show, in 1985 at the Castle Espie Gallery, now the home of the late Sir Peter Scott's famed Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust Charity in Ireland. In 1987 the National Gallery of Ireland and the Douglas Hyde Gallery in Dublin included her diploma picture in their joint exhibition, Irish Women Artists. It seemed fitting that in 1996 the Ulster Museum's retrospective of her life's work should have been a celebration in her lifetime, an act experienced by few artists.
Kathleen Mackie is survived by her youngest son, Patrick, her grandchildren and her great grandchildren.