Daybreak and dancers — the quality of light at the very earliest part of the morning, and the suggestion of movement, of tiny botanical presences caught in the act of...
Daybreak and dancers — the quality of light at the very earliest part of the morning, and the suggestion of movement, of tiny botanical presences caught in the act of something that human observation interrupts. Kath Leone's miniature six-layer screen print on hand-painted watercolour paper with hand-torn deckled edges captures this particular quality of early light: the glow before the day fully establishes itself.
Each copy within the edition is slightly different due to the hand-painted watercolour layer that Leone applies to the paper before the six ink layers are screenprinted on top — the watercolour washes varying from print to print, making the miniature format carry more individual character than a conventional edition would. Originally from Cape Town, South Africa, now London-based. Signed. £55.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Kath Leone
Kath Leone is a London-based artist and textile designer originally from Cape Town, South Africa whose highly imaginative, pseudo-botanical screen prints feature plants, insects, fungi, animals and sea life. She was drawn to screen printing by the glow and depth that overlapping translucent inks produce — a quality she uses to capture something of the charm of old-fashioned fabrics while building the enchanting layered colour palettes that define her work. Leone has synaesthesia, specifically grapheme-colour and chromesthesia, meaning she experiences additional colour, texture and shape perception when hearing everyday sounds and words — a condition that feeds directly into her relationship with colour at every stage of the printing process. She hand-paints the paper in subtle watercolour washes before screenprinting, making each copy in an edition slightly different from the next. Her subjects range from the woodland floor (fly agaric mushrooms, mosses, brambles, oak saplings) to individual butterfly species from around the world, to the fairy-world of mycological imagination.
