Hello and welcome!

Originally from Essex in the UK, I’ve recently returned to London having spent nine months travelling 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:

• Textile design: I’ve had a number of my designs digitally printed onto fabric; so far I’ve had fun sewing cushions, scarves, skirts and dresses. I’m not a professional seamstress so I don’t sell finished garments but I do sell my fabrics by the metre, click here for details.

• 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.

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

• 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. 

• Sketching: I like to crack open my tin of watercolour paints for some loose drawing and splattery colouring. I particularly love making pen and wash  sketches of food, then eating it.

• 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 beast.

• 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 couple of 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.