Fairy caps — the name given to various small, delicate mushroom species whose caps have the particular quality of appearing to belong to the imaginary as much as the botanical....
Fairy caps — the name given to various small, delicate mushroom species whose caps have the particular quality of appearing to belong to the imaginary as much as the botanical. Kath Leone's miniature six-layer screen print renders them on hand-painted watercolour paper with hand-torn deckled edges, the small format amplifying the detail rather than reducing it.
The hand-painted watercolour layer beneath the screenprint means each copy within the edition is slightly different — the watercolour washes varying from print to print before the six ink layers are applied on top. Leone is originally from Cape Town, South Africa, now London-based. Her pseudo-botanical art features plants, fungi, insects and sea life, built on a practice of sustained observation and the layering of translucent inks to achieve the glowing colour depth she is known for. 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.
