Katie McGowan, Founder of Wavism

The Female Founders Campaign is The W’s editorial exploration of women who build creative worlds on their own terms, founders whose work is shaped as much by intuition as it is by intention. In this edition, we turn our attention to Katie McGowan, a contemporary artist and the founder of Wavism, a painting practice rooted in movement, emotion, and instinct. Known for sweeping brushstrokes, layered textures, and bold, expressive colour, Katie’s work translates feeling into form, capturing everything from stillness and clarity to grief, anger, and joy. Influenced by Impressionism, abstract expressionism, and contemporary impasto, and further refined through her studies at the Florence Academy of Art, she represents a new generation of female founders, artists who blend tradition with innovation and build visual languages that feel deeply personal, quietly powerful, and unmistakably their own.