KATE Downie has created an entirely new genre in the art world: performance drawing.

Armed only with a blank wall, charcoals and some willing participants, she turns the ordinary into the extraordinary.

When we met she was getting ready for her latest adventure at the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts Kelly Gallery.

The beginnings of charcoal sketches already stretched across the top of one wall, a motorway fly-over snaking through the air above the tiered rooftops of a Chinese pagoda.

What fills in after that is entirely up to the people who turn up at the gallery in Douglas Street tonight and tomorrow morning.

"With these drawings you're very much thinking on your feet. You can only plan so much, but the whole idea is that they are responsive to the environment, the situation you find yourself in and to the audience," says the Edinburgh-based artist.

The invitation to the gallery is intentionally ambiguous; this is neither a children's event nor one for adults. If you're interested in art and want to be a part of it, head along.

Charcoal footprints of everyone who visits the gallery will appear on the walls, while some people might also get the chance to work alongside Kate. "It's going to be quite lively," she smiles.

Alongside the footprints will be charcoal bicycle tyre tracks, a technique Kate first tried at an exhibition earlier this year in Beijing. She collects all the charcoal that falls off the wall into a tray, rolls the bike tyres through it and runs it along the wall.

The gallery will also feature a collage of work done last weekend at Glasgow's Chinatown by Kate and Chinese artist Chi Zhang.

WHILE she sketched charcoal drawings of the M8, cars and Victorian tenement buildings, he translated them into traditional Chinese ink paintings of trees, flowing rivers and giant carp.

"I did my drawing from life and he made ink paintings from his imagination, but using the same composition," she explains.

"He said the buildings in Glasgow would be distant hills, and instead of cars there were boats and carp. It has almost become surrealistic. In one painting the car park became a big pond with lotus leaves and fish."

The final wall of the gallery will feature a collection of monoprints called Shangrila La La, each one made individually at print studios in London and Glasgow but all from the same source material.

They are the perfect representation of the clash of old and new in modern China; warm light glows from the windows of an artist's compound in Beijing, surrounded by willow trees that blend in with a towering electricity pylon.

The monotypes will be seen in Walk Through Resonant Landscape, a two-venue exhibition of Kate's work at the RGI in Glasgow and the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh, opening next week. Oil paintings, drawings and monoprints capture the energy of modern China and the tranquillity of traditional landscapes. In a subtle way, Kate is a conduit again for east meeting west. To see all the work, you will have to travel to both galleries.

It is the latest stage of a journey that has taken her from Scotland to China four times in the past three years.

"I've always loved ink painting but I knew it didn't matter how many books you look at or museums you go to, you've really got to go to China," she explains.

She received the RSA William Gillies Bequest Award to travel to Beijing and Shanghai to work with ink painting masters and develop her own practice in the medium.

"A lot of people in the Scottish art world are nervous about China because of the human rights issues. I think people should be out there working, as by going there you're helping to develop a cultural understanding."

On her last trip, Kate represented the UK at the He Shun International Arts Festival and she returns in January to be part of a three-person show featuring the work of a Japanese artist and a Chinese artist at the prestigious Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing.

"They don't usually show foreign artists, it's a massive honour to be invited to exhibit," she says.

l Participative drawing sessions at RGI Kelly Gallery, 118 Douglas Street, Glasgow, tonight from 5-8pm and tomorrow from 10am-1pm. Walk Through Resonant Landscape exhibition at RGI from August 28 - September 28 and Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, from August 31 - October 6.