Kate Mills has finally donated her first-year Queen’s studio painting to the Union Gallery, where it will hang in the office and possibly be loaned out to other departments. She painted this five-by-seven-foot painting in March 1998 for a BFA studio class assignment. In the class, each student was tasked with painting in this mammoth size. She decided to paint an answer to a cliché question a teacher might ask in high school after summer vacation: What happened in my first year at Queen’s? It had felt like a big year for her, as it was her first time away from home. She put her new friends Natalie Bowles (Com’01) and Kerri Austin (Artsci’01) into the painting. Affected by the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, Kate also put in the broken trees along University Avenue from the disruptive January 1998 ice storm. Also pictured: her second home, Ontario Hall, where the fine arts classes are located; the radiator from her room in Ban Righ; and, outside her window, Grant and Kingston halls. Fast-forward 20 years – she decided the painting needed a better home than her parents’ basement, where they had kindly stored it. After she alerted former classmates, professors, and the Union Gallery in March 2021 through social media that she was interested in donating the painting, gallery director Carina Magazzeni accepted the painting. Presently, Kate is not a professional artist, but she has always appreciated the lifelong friendships she made and how her knowledge, confidence, and interests were enriched by her time at Queen’s.
