Katy Casey – Painting Folkestone

Katy Casey is a fireball of creative energy in Folkestone.  Mum to four children, influences and opportunity come at all times of the day and night.  Dipping into exhibitions in pop-up spaces in town, to painting signs and windows on shop-fronts across the county, Katy is becoming omnipresent.  Her new boards for The Harbour Inn have mesmeric peas and a gravy boat that make you want to see the real thing for comparison.  Folkelife met at her recent exhibition in Whelk Boy Studios for a chat.

“I do a lot of my painting in the early mornings, pre-dawn.  I like the light at that point of the day.  Purposely, I don’t put on a lamp; the half light guides me with the colours on my palette and I find it helps with texture too.  This part here is really flat, yet this area is collaged so adds to the painting.  I like painting what I have seen on old movies growing up, and the collage/painting collaboration adds to the element of film sets and perspective.”

representation of women

“This picture here is of Audrey Hepburn in a film called How To Steal A Million.  It’s not a close likeness, but you can see her emotions here.  She looks quite sad.  In these films, women were older, and their age was recognised as a credit to them and their experience.  They were mums, their make-up is quite thick and you can see wrinkles, yet they are glamorous and desirable.  Not as we are the moment where youth seems to be the only beauty; in these films, women have much more to give.  If they were a woman of colour, they might only be the musician in the film yet their other cast members treat them more like a human than the film industry treated them, they had more credit, more equality.

“But tissues also make up a big part of my pictures.  I feel that tissues hold a lot of emotion.  We use them when we cry, happy or sad tears,or when we have a cold.  I found I was keeping them and painting them before throwing them away.  They old that emotion, but also, they cast shadows and then look quite apocalyptic.  The tissue adds a desert rock scape to my pictures, with captured emotions. 

“I add text to some of my paintings, such as this one which has the word ‘Love’ on it.  I painted that word very soon after our first son was born, and I’ve been waiting for the right picture to go with it.  This is a lady in the film Rear Window, who struggles to find love, and is contemplating ending it all but then hears the pianist across the yard playing a song he’s written.”

monoprint, layers, textures

“My work is a mixture of techniques.  There are monoprints – such as the jelly plate printing in the background of this piece with a cowboy in the moonlight.  On top of the jelly print I have an ink sketch that’s collaged over it.  It’s lots of layers of paint.  Yet these two blue cowboys are inspired by a 1950s comic, and it’s my version of them.  I really enjoyed painting them, I was in my garden, and had the comic in front of me.  The vivid blue gives it something too. 

“I create art in many forms, I’ve always worked like this, and there has been a friction in me when thinking of creating art as a leisure.  Creating something often starts off as a fun idea, but then as an artist you need to monetise your time and productivity.  I have always worked, and always worked towards an exhibition, but thought that now I was old enough to just get on and do it myself!  I’ve been parts of group exhibitions, but I am a full-time artist, and a full-time mum, and I’ve decided I need to do more exhibitions.”

natural progression

“Murals are something I really enjoy doing, and it’s a natural progression from murals to sign-writing.  I couldn’t do it without having been a painter first, but it’s a massively different skill.  The paint is different; it’s enamel and sticky and chemical.  You need to be calm!  I normally work with the TV on and music, but with the sign-writing I need to concentrate, and don’t like anyone talking to me.  Also, don’t take my photo when I’m sign-writing, I have a sign-writing face, and it’s not photogenic!

“I work in stages.  Obviously, if I’m sign-writing, then that’s a project that needs to be started and finished in a normal time-frame.  My paintings work differently.  Sometimes I can start and finish one in an hour, other times, there are elements that I need to walk away and think about, before committing them permanently to the canvas.  This guy here was supposed to be my mock-up, to see how that figure would sit on the landscape I had painted. But, I really liked his neon orange standing out on the backdrop of the desert.  So he sat there for a while, and then I committed.”

A boards and signs

“Whilst here in the exhibition I have been completing another project which is four A Boards for the Lubens Restaurant group.  These are going outside The Harbour Inn and have fish and chips on, and mussels and oysters – which were really lovely to paint!  There’s another with pizza on, and a full English, and pie and mash and so on.  These have been great to paint because they are done on a flat surface, and you need to get texture with tone.  People need to see these from a distance, and I’ve always loved typography and messaging from when I was growing up.  You know when slogan tees were a thing in the 1990s, ever since then I’ve loved that element of communicating through imagery, advertising and what makes a good image.  I don’t think I would have been very good in that environment, of cutthroat advertising!  Painting these boards though has been so much fun!

“I’ve done the window in Mugs coffee shop on Tram Road; there’s a big mural at the back of St Peter’s school; I did the Community Fridge on Dover Road before this exhibition, and there’s more to do on that front.  I did a project in Deal which was a ghost sign, painting on textured brick, and working on scaffolding at a height.  That was fun, well, fun when you got up there!  When I’m painting outside I get to meet lots of different people, and there’s another local sign-writer I met whilst working on the Community Fridge.  I wouldn’t have met him had I not been outside painting, and he does pinstriping – patterns on bikes and cars – which I have never done.  And he wants to learn about ghost signs, so we’re going to share some skills, because that’s always a good thing to do. 

“I’ll then have to plan my next exhibition, which I think might focus on the invisibility of the mother.  It’s something that will always be a talking point, and something I’m interested in.  You are less visible when you are someone’s mum, but yet still the strong woman to be able to carry everyone, supporting your children to achieve their goals and catching them when they fall.  Always with a box of tissues on hand.”