Hello and welcome! I hope you’re safe and well.

I’m spending a creative lockdown with my family in my home county of Essex.

I returned to Bermondsey, London in 2019 for a spell after spending nine months traveling and painting in India and the Netherlands.

Prior to that I was based for eleven years in Vejer de la Frontera, a beautiful white town in southern Spain.

Here’s a bit about my art projects:

• During 2020 I was absorbed with my “Painted Snapshots of Bermondsey” artist book project. I sent to original to the Brooklyn Art Library and then published a limited edition print run of 50 copies which I signed, numbered and sold to raise money for Southwark Foodbank.

• Illustration: I designed logos, cards, a food map, vintage style labels, prints and postcards for local businesses in Vejer and made cover art for various books and CD‘s produced by writers and musicians in the area. I have a particular passion for food illustration.

• Sketching: I like to crack open my tin of watercolour paints for some loose drawing and splattery colouring. 

• Textile design: I’ve had a number of my designs digitally printed onto fabric; so far I’ve had fun sewing cushions, scarves, skirts, dresses, a tea cosy and face masks.

• Travel Blogging – I recorded my trip around India in words, photos and sketches and posted them in my latest work section. I also drew portraits and painted a few murals while staying in Rajasthan.

• The Black Dawg – an illustrated poem about depression and hope. In 2016 I raised funds on the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter to self-publish this beautiful picture book for adults which aims to raise awareness and reduce stigma around mental health issues. I made the illustrations and my friend Louis McIntosh wrote the poem. 

• Portraits: whether ‘analogue’ in charcoal, pencil, watercolour and acrylic paints or made digitally in Photoshop these make lovely gifts and wedding cards.

• Murals and signs: I’ve painted on windows, walls, wood, tiles, concrete and even a car door in public and private spaces in Spain, India and the Netherlands. Some of them end up getting erased or painted over but that’s the impermanent nature of the mural.

• Exhibitions: In January 2018 I showed examples of my illustrations at Marcel Snyders’ book launch for his play Té Verde (I designed the cover). In the last few years I had pieces included in group shows organised by Arte Vejer, La Pinturera and Vejer Inspira. I’ve also staged solo exhibitions in London, Cádiz and Vejer.

The writer Jackie Cornwall says

“I came to Kathryn Hockey’s art through a St. Ives prism, seeing in her clear colours and careful outlines the legacy of Ben Nicholson, Christopher Wood and Bryan Pearce. How wonderful then, that when I asked her to create a painting for a friend’s birthday, she gave me that most quintessential St. Ives discovery, a windowless windowsill! Her work vibrates with a life-affirming joie de vivre. Her ability to find colour and interest in unregarded objects is one of the most engaging aspects of her art.

Everything in Kathryn’s work has its own glamour, from bulging gas bottles to clustered flowers. A white skull, an elegantly strutting rooster, a squadron of peppers are almost tamed by her instinct for line and pattern, but in their exuberant colours nature has its way. A dancer’s boots, crowned with roses and creased with use, lead our eyes into a looking-glass world. Beyond her delicately wrought townscapes dance the lights of infinite possibility.

Sometimes cartoonish and stylised, sometimes lovingly detailed, her people are not strangers; they look straight into our hearts, and whether they smile, wink knowingly or merely look out at us from the sanctuary of their own thoughts, we know them and their humanity. To encounter one of her subjects is to find a friend. Her animals too, are real personalities.

Kathryn’s work would enliven any context, but in the brilliant light of the Costa de la Luz her feel for both colour and line have come together in a unique combination. She is a true artist, one who makes art out of everything she sees, and I trust that in the future, her reputation will increase as she deserves.”

You can see blog posts about all my latest creations here.