Kate Hawkins (b. 1980) is a British artist working at the boundary between painting and functional object. In 2014 she founded CommonRoom after completing her PhD the previous year. 

Her practice is rooted in betweens. It connects the shapes and materials of everyday life, from a throwaway dish cloth to a piece of heavily decorated upholstery fabric. Resisting categorisation she works in the seams between disciplines, material and image, shallow and deep, surface and underneath. Her paintings often use base cloths with pre-existing utilities, that shift in meaning and value as paint is applied. Her subject matter is varied but meaning is consistently bound to the material of making.  

She has exhibited widely. In 2025 she was selected for the John Moores Painting Prize and in 2026 undertook the Kings Foundation Residency at Dumfries House. Previous exhibitions include Bloomberg New Contemporaries (2013), at Spike Island and the ICA; New Order II (2014) at the Saatchi gallery; Painting in Time (2015) the Tetley, Leeds; Painting in Time: Part Two (2016), the Sullivan Galleries, SAIC, Chicago and Idea Home, MIMA, Middlesborough (2017).

Kate is creative director at CommonRoom and has designed the Mochaware collection, Dressing & Undressing, Lucky Leaf, Best Buds, Ivy Chaplet, and Airmail.

You can find more of her work at katehawkins.co.uk