BECKY BLAIR
Becky Blair is a multi-media artist based in Brighton, combining painting, embroidery and weaving on canvas. Her artworks are a distillation of the things that captivate and inspire her, finding magic in what others might pass by: the ordinary and imperfect details of daily life, flea markets and second-hand shops, forgotten boxes and objects rediscovered from the past.
Increasingly, Becky has been exploring the human impulse to make and our long relationship with textiles, looking back through the history of weaving and fibre-making to prehistoric times. She is interested in our haptic connection to cloth and the memories and associations held within it, experimenting with techniques including free-warp tapestry, knotted netting, looping, split-ply weaving and embroidery alongside paint and drawing.
The process of each work is patient, intuitive and meditative. Beginning directly onto raw canvas, Becky works without a predetermined outcome, allowing motifs, colour and materials to develop slowly. There is little room for correction, so making becomes an act of attention: playing, responding and giving the work time to reveal itself.
Using an abstract language of personal motifs and found shapes, Becky sees the works as conversations - inwardly with herself and outwardly with the viewer. Beneath their immediate colour and exuberance are ideas around identity, memory and the creative human drive: the things we feel and sense where words sometimes fall short, and the larger questions that make life mysterious.
At their core, however, Becky's paintings continue to strive towards joy, play and connection - the qualities she sees as bringing out the best in our humanity.
Originally from the Midlands, Becky completed a Fine Art degree in Cheltenham in 1994. She spent much of her twenties travelling while creating commissioned artworks for public and commercial spaces, later developing an international practice with regular solo exhibitions in Australia and the UK and participation in art fairs worldwide.
Across more than three decades of making, Becky's distinctive work has also led to collaborations in publishing, fashion, music, interiors and advertising. These have included IKEA, Habitat, Toyota, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, Australian fashion label Gorman and Sussex potter Rachel Entwistle.
Becky's paintings take me on travels and adventures and away from the hum drum of daily life.
The quality of Becky Blair's paintings is undeniable. Her colours bring my home alive and make it look fresh and vibrant. We love her work and will be looking for another one soon.
CURRENT COLLECTION
'Ideas of self and human creativity bind this work together. I'm interested in getting back to basics: playing in a flow state, allowing motifs to emerge freely, tending to the work slowly and giving it time to reveal itself.
This collection celebrates joy, but underneath it's about the things we feel and sense where words fall short - and the big questions that make life mysterious.'
Becky Blair
STUDIO
East facing light floods in and you are high enough that nothing overlooks to distract your eyes. Even on an overcast day, the space is well lit and welcoming.
I've worked with Becky for many years and always reslish spending time with her in her workspace. It's efficient and organised but homely, with a sofa and books, a kettle and favourite things. A home from her very lovely home.
Conversation flows easily as Becky is a long-time friend as well as a colleague so we jump around topics from art to family to dancing and back again.
Becky is finishing a commission when I visit. There are finished pieces for me to see and canvases in progress, leaning up against walls or drying flat on the floor. There is also a table of small works in the process of being framed up for the gallery.
Becky's paintings are always one step ahead of the crowd. She is not an artist to stick to the same story yet her colour palette and technique are instantly recognisible, regardless of her subject matter. Birds, beaches, landscapes or abstracts: compositions created with the use of complex underpainting, glazes and confident use of colour.
Customers regularly come back wanting the work which we were showing 12 months previously, which they have been thinking about all this time. But those paintings have not only found new homes but if they were Australian inspired beach scenes then Becky will have moved onto Sussex lily ponds. Indian crowd scenes to bird-filled trees. Vibrant gardens to the minutiae of childhood treasures.