A little oak sapling, luminous with new life, symbolic of stability, wisdom and endurance. The diminutive of oak — an oakling rather than an oak — captures something about the...
A little oak sapling, luminous with new life, symbolic of stability, wisdom and endurance.
The diminutive of oak — an oakling rather than an oak — captures something about the subject's particular quality: the full significance of what the oak tree represents (the longest-lived of British native trees, the host to more species than any other, the symbol of endurance in the landscape) present in miniature in the sapling, the meaning front-loaded even before the tree has grown into it. Kath Leone's five-layer screen print renders the young tree in the luminous, translucent overlapping inks that are her practice's signature — the glow she describes as the quality that drew her to screen printing in the first place. Five layers, hand printed onto heritage white paper. Signed. £95.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Kath Leone
Kath Leone is a contemporary artist and textile designer from Cape Town, South Africa. Her highly imaginative, pseudo botanical art features plants, insects, animals, fungi and sea life. Compelled by the glow and depth of overlapping colours in screen printing, Kath aims to capture some of the charm found in old-fashioned fabrics by combining layers of translucent inks to build enchanting colour palettes in her work.
Having a condition called synaesthesia, specifically grapheme-colour and chromesthesia, Kath experiences continual additional colour, texture and shape perception when hearing everyday sounds and words. This saturates Kath’s mind and life, influencing her artistic practice and explaining her obsession with colour-mixing.