“They are carefully pitched so they resonate more than clash,” she says. “The paintings field quite a complicated relationship in colour and tone.”

Another striking thing about Kate’s paintings is the fact that they have captured a moment in time, which makes you wonder what happened before and after. A little girl with a doll stands in front of two ballet dresses. Another stands next to a wedding dress looking through a French window at two unhappy women. Five distracted girls are in a room with two cats and two jackdaws. A solitary girl looks rather forlornly into a hand mirror while a dog looks into an empty bathtub. “I find that people will input their own narrative onto them,” she says. “My paintings are not meant to tell stories, but they are meant to promote a narrative. They represent a frozen moment in time.”

There’s a lot more that makes the HQ Winter Show worth going along to, even if you’re not an art collector. Paintings by Harold Mockford, Anne de Geus and Lis Lawrence; abstracts by Maria Kuipers; screenprints by Henrik Simonsen. There are ceramics and jewellery, and some wonderful figurative sculptures by Anne Scott. “We’re not going for a show in which you can bag a cheap gift,” says curator Sarah O’Kane. "But if you’re looking for something really special you might well find it here." AL