Morning all!
Cor, lovely night at a super posh do this week celebrating the book launch of
'A Celebration of British Craft' I'm SO proud to be part of it - HUGE thanks to the LOVELY team at
QEST!
In 2007 I was VERY lucky to receive a Queen Elizabeth Scholarship (QEST) to go and study Illustration at ARU in Cambridge. This grant COMPLETELY changed my life and I wouldn't be an artist now if it wasn't for their generous support! The book highlights the work of 100 scholars across a diverse range of art forms. Photographer Julian Calder visited me during my Artist Residency this summer at Coutts bank to take the photo below...
He is a whizz, I am the LEAST photogenic person on the globe but he is warm and encouraging and COMPLETELY put me at ease. I actually enjoyed having my photos taking by him (and this NEVER happens!) The book text was written by the equally talented Karen Bennett (I've included the full transcript at the bottom of the post). I jabbered away for AGES and she SOME HOW managed to cut down all my waffling into a lovely piece - thanks Karen!
This is my FABULOUS friend
Amy, she is a genius and I love going to posh QEST stuff with her and being naughty x
My dress is made by
Dig For Victory in Brighton - they are WONDERFUL (the print on the dress is mine - and originally was created for Harvey Nichols) x
I have been juggling TOO many projects this week so my brain is tofu scramble, PLUS Al, has been away in the States BOOOOOO. BUT, he is back tomorrow WHOOP WHOOP and we're off again (to freeze to death most likely) in Clementine the camper van at the weekend and I CANNOT WAIT!
Have a lovely weekend, I suggest it should involve a bobble hat and crumpets and ideally a long walk and a pub with an open fire. I have now put the heated blanket back on my bed and am merrily ignoring the warnings not to leave it on all night (don't tell my mum) x
Lots of love - here follows Karen's FAB text ..... x
"Nobody Kerry Lemon knew growing up could give her any advice on how she could use her love of drawing professionally. ‘I always adored drawing and found it potent; if I drew a picture of beautiful shoes, to me they were as real as owning an actual pair.’ Her school suggested training to become a primary school teacher. She had planned to study for a B.Ed. at Reading University, but just before starting switched to study Fine Art. On graduating she began working in the education departments of Museums and Galleries and undertook an MA in Museum Studies. After time Kerry got an Education role job working with five artists-in-residence at South Hill Park Arts Centre in Berkshire (removed) she enjoyed it, but loved their job more and longed to be an artist.
The breakthrough came when she discovered the MA in Illustration at Anglia Ruskin University Cambridge. ‘I was certain this would give me the chance to be the artist I had in my head, whose drawings could end up in a magazine or on the side of an aeroplane. The QEST Scholarship was a lifeline.’ At the crack of dawn every Wednesday, she travelled to Cambridge with a rucksack crammed with books so she could read and sketch on the way. Circumstances mean that Kerry only completed the first-year Postgraduate Diploma, but she was filled with optimism.
She wrote a business plan that gave her three years to become a full-time artist. ‘I achieved this in half the time, albeit supporting a basic existence.’ Initially she was paid (Removed) to illustrate print articles and websites - typewriter here, a cauliflower there - then the jobs started to grow. Kerry was asked by the Electrum Gallery in London if she could paint their window. Her first thought was ‘not in a million years, everybody will be watching’, but she practised drawing backwards on the windows of her flat and experimented with paints to discover which would stay on (and come off). ‘I didn’t sleep the night before, but loved the scale and interaction (a young girl walking past was transfixed – I would have been the same).’
Kerry documented everything so she could market the service if it went well. She contacted Liberty and they were looking for a mural for their new Beauty Hall, so she created a giant magnolia and peacock to adorn the new space. ‘This felt like a passport to a new realm of work and I have a reminder in ink: a magnolia flower tattoo on my foot.’ She found the nature of retail work, prominent for a couple of months then ceasing to exist, a freeing experience. ‘I could create something absolutely right for the moment and to the best of my ability, knowing it wouldn’t be winking at me 10 years down the line looking out of place.’
However, Kerry also wanted to work on something lasting. She contacted property developers and was invited to a meeting about mixed-use development in London Fields; the brief was a clean slate. There was glass-bottomed, rooftop pool above the atrium with a wildflower garden at ground level. ‘They placed amazing trust in me and after a period of research I created an 18-metre by six-metre brass wall installation cut as a patch of water lilies.’ The light through the pool dances across them and reflects onto the atrium floor. As with every other job, this put Kerry into a new bracket and she was asked to oversee the artistic elements on the redevelopment of Bracknell town centre.
She is pictured in the window of Coutts private bank on The Strand in London. ‘They have a beautiful rooftop garden that I wanted to bring down to the street.’ She was there as Artist in Residence which included creating prints for their top clients and culminated in live painting four giant canvases in the window, which were auctioned for charity. ‘It is empowering to know I have gone out and found these jobs; I long to tell my eight-year-old self that this is how I make my living.’
From designing actual versions of her imaginary plants with molecular scientists at Royal Holloway University to painting a mural of instruments for the Musashino Academia Musicae University in Tokyo, she knows she can make anything happen from a drawing on a page and that feels as powerful now as it did as a child. The title of her book says it all: Fearless Drawing."
