Western Morning News (Saturday)
How one artist’s work helped her cope with lockdown and ill health
Frank Ruhrmund views Kate Lennon’s exhibition, 2020 Vision
There can be no doubting the fact that just about every one of the many artists living and working in West Cornwall has had to re-consider his or her methods of working during the pandemic. For Kate Lennon, it has meant working towards her exhibition 2020 Vision now being held in the Daisy Laing Gallery in Penzance. A ‘first’ for her, and what an impressive debut it is. Aside from the top quality of her art works, she also addresses the Covid quality and its challenges of the past year or so, plus the domestic and health problems that have besieged her, to present what could be called an object lesson for us all in how to react and manage some of the awful things that life throws at us along the way.
A talented lady who grew up in East Yorkshire, she studied fine art and painting at Bath University, which led to her doing two placements at Tate St Ives that in turn, and almost inevitably, led to her falling for the delights of Cornwall. She was to settle in West Cornwall in 2003 when she worked at Tate St Ives and the Barbara Hepworth Museum for several years until 2012 when, sadly, she was faced with redundancy. Fortunately, she then not only obtained a post at the Morrab Library in Penzance but also, and with her husband, bought a caravan in 2013 that they converted to the mobile Little Wonder Cafe, which for a few years was a popular feature on the seafront between Newlyn and Penzance. In 2018, they moved the Little Wonder Cafe to a new home at Cape Cornwall, and in the following year she left the Morrab Library in order to concentrate with her husband on the growing success of their venture at Cape Cornwall. And then, as she says with a wry smile: “In 2020, lockdown happened.”
It was to be but one of the extraordinary events which unfolded at this time. As if Covid wasn’t enough, bravely she adds: “Lockdown was followed by a cancer diagnosis that hit me out of the blue and felt like a surreal nightmare. The need to create quickly at that point was crucial to my mental health. I started to think about the virus and what was now going on in my own body.” Thinking, too, about her art, as it happened the shortage of materials and her inability to go out and buy the art supplies she needed was to lead to what she calls... “Inventive thrift, to such things as tester pots, and offcuts of wood. Indeed, the whole thing led to positive, joyous thinking, to life affirming that counteracted all the terrible things that were happening across the world, and to me.”
She was to find that old art materials allowed her to paint again, and that the diversity of materials and everything from biological forms to fabric patterns and surface design found their way into her work. Talking about which, she says: “A typical day in my garden studio may involve cutting shapes and tester pot painting, to getting various base colours ready for different materials and mark-making. I never have much of a plan and work is often dictated by something I’ve seen in the garden – fuelled by lots of coffee and tea, it is very much my happy place.”
It is a happiness she now shares with us with the colourful and cheerful art works that make up her exhibition, 2020 Vision.
Not be missed, admission is free, and it can be seen in the Daisy Laing Gallery, Old Bakehouse Lane, Chapel Street, Penzance, until the end of July.