Kate Hawkins (b. 1980) is a British artist working at the boundary between painting and functional object. She founded CommonRoom in 2014 after completing her PhD at Southampton University. This followed an MA at the Slade, UCL after an MFA at Edinburgh University.

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; Idea Home, MIMA, Middlesborough (2017).

Kate is creative director at CommonRoom. She splits her time between art and interiors.