Buy Good Art: Kate Lycett
There will be more than one of these posts. The artists will appear in no particular order of merit. They and their works are special to Mrs Cheoff and me but for all sorts of different reasons. Too different to compare and rank things in any meaningful order.
If you aren’t already familiar with Neil Gaiman’s keynote address for the May 17, 2012 commencement ceremony at The University of the Arts, I have embedded it at the bottom of this page. His exhortation to “Make Good Art” (even if the cat explodes!) is the great message which started me writing here.
Do like Neil and make good art of your own. But then look at others who are so damn fine at making good art. They might just be doing it for even more than the joy of making good art and be trying to support their finances by selling their creativity at the same time.
So.
Also.
Buy Good Art.
At present - Covid-19 is upon us - those artists need our support. Their galleries and studios are closed to us and they will be relying on you finding ways to purchase from a distance.
In recent years we have been lucky enough to afford a few works which attracted us. I was going to call them indulgences but that would be undermining the very real and sustaining pleasure which each work and their artist continue to give us.
Right (in no particular order!)
Number one: Kate Lycett
Last year we finally visited Kate Lycett’s studio and the gallery which displays her work in Hebden Bridge. We had discovered her through the mixed media of her web and Facebook pages and alerts to exhibitions. We determined to see things at closer quarters and check our strong suspicion that we would like a piece by her in our home.
Mrs Cheoff was already very taken by this one. I remained to be convinced. I crumbled willingly as soon as we saw it framed, hung and lit.
That is my photograph of the picture now in place on a wall at home. The camera does lie. My photograph looks nowhere close to what I see with my eyes!
“Painted in 2018 for ‘Craggs & Fells’ - a solo exhibition at Heart Gallery, Hebden Bridge. This is part of my favourite running route, and is a regular Friday morning outing with the running girls. The house is Stones Hey Gate, from Widdop Road, heading towards Slack. I don’t ever put people in the paintings, but the two hares (which I have seen in the fields up there) are two of my lovely friends. The white hare is Gloria, the purple one is Gill.”
That was the artist’s inspiration behind ‘Friday Morning’. It is a personal experience, elements of which Kate has decided to share with us. This is a real place made magical through Kate’s ability to communicate it through her art.
The more ordinary reality can be explored with Google Maps:
Click - and run along with Kate!
We have now had the privilege of meeting Kate on more than one occasion. She is chock-full of intelligence, integrity and industry and with ‘Friday Morning’ we have taken some of that into our home. You can ‘meet’ her for a couple of minutes as she talks about some of her work here.
There is technique on display in all of Kate’s work but it takes a very quiet second place to the insistent visual delights on offer. We can now explore part of her enchanted and enchanting artistry. There is a darkness soon to be conquered by morning sunlight. Frozen crystals of human breath settle on the landscape. If you listen carefully you can hear the sound of feet as they crunch on frosted ground. The birds certainly hear it and they scatter with enough calm to form their own pattern on the scene. Hares play their part lightly - and unaware of the folkloric magic which humans bestow upon them. A cold, broad vista offers comforting arcs of shelter… Ahem. I’m doing that thing where the viewer takes over when the artist has decided to stop. But I believe artistic creation is sustained through the ways it is owned and reacted to.
The artist is sustained by the drive to make good art. But we can help that process continue if we buy their good art. In these restricted times Kate and thousands of other artists have set up the means to explore their work and purchase it from well over two metres distant. Doing that in ‘peace-time’ has already given us huge pleasure. I recommend you give it a try.
From Kate’s website:
Here is Kate Lycett’s portfolio to inspire you.
I’ll leave you with some of the details from the work we chose. Details which draw you in while deliciously distracting you at the same time.
Oh. And, of course, here’s that promised speech from Neil Gaiman (himself)
Neil Gaiman exhorts us all to ‘Make Good Art’. This is just one of a series of posts in my blog where I advocate that you also buy good art. Creativity deserves to be rewarded and fed.
