In The Heath Fairies, Kath Leone invites us into an enchanting, botanical world where the boundary between plant, fungus and spirit blurs into poetic imagination. Created especially for the Blisters:...
In The Heath Fairies, Kath Leone invites us into an enchanting, botanical world where the boundary between plant, fungus and spirit blurs into poetic imagination. Created especially for the Blisters: Time to Play exhibition, this six-layer handmade screenprint is one of a limited edition of 100.
Leone’s signature style — lush layering of translucent inks, intricate linework, and a muted yet glowing palette — animates the heathland’s mosses, fungi and undergrowth with an otherworldly presence. The titular “fairies” emerge not as traditional winged creatures, but as delicate junctions of mycelium, leaf and light — ephemeral, elusive, and deeply rooted in nature’s textures.
In the context of Blisters: Time to Play — a show centred on screenprinting as playful medium and collaborative spirit — this print stands as a testament to the magic possible in layered printing, at once detailed and dreamlike.
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.