Rotating Art Show
May 20 @ 8:00 am – 5:00 pm
“Between Tides” by Kate Leal is the next exhibit in the 2026 Rotating Art Show series. The exhibit will be on display in the first floor conference room of the Town Hall and open from 9:00 a.m.- 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday (excluding holidays) from May 1 – July 29, 2026.
Artist Bio:
Kate Leal is an artist located on the Outer Banks, NC. Her paintings manifest the essence of this region through her nuanced acrylic pastel compositions.
Possessing a Bachelor’s in Fine Arts from Massachusetts College of Art and Design, and further refining her craft through a studio intensive painting program at Goldsmiths University of London, Kate exemplifies a distinctive approach to her artistry.
Kate’s paintings display the soft contrasts, ambient light, and subtle shadows within the coastal landscapes.
Artists Statement:
“This body of work depicts scenes from Portugal — the country where my husband was born and where our extended family lives — painted from our home on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. The subject is not Portugal itself but the condition of living across it: what it means to hold love, family, and daily life in two countries at once, and to raise multicultural children inside the gap between them.
The images I choose — streets,architecture, ordinary domestic scenes — are not nostalgic. They function as claims: that these places and people are part of our family life here, not a distant origin story. They also acknowledge my position. I am painting as a participant, not an insider. My relationship to Portuguese culture is real, but it has been built in adulthood through marriage and practice rather than birth.
Families like ours are increasingly common, but the cultural and political frameworks available to us remain thin. Dual identity is not additive. You do not become more of each country. You become someone who lives on the seam between them. These paintings try to document that condition.
We live on the Atlantic coast and look out at the same ocean that touches Lisbon. The paintings work from a simple premise: when we face the water here, we are facing a mirror. Our family stands on the opposite shore, at the edge of the same ocean. That orientation —not metaphor, but geography — is the organizing logic of the work. Four thousand miles of water sit between us, and transatlantic migration has shaped both countries for centuries.
Families like mine are part of that longer record. The paintings treat the ocean as both fact and mirror: the distance that structures our lives, and the surface that keeps the other shore in view. “
