Lisa Kilty Artist

Detail from a large unstretched canvas I’ve completed which took 180 hours… a labour of love

I’m currently working on a book about my artwork as I am heading towards 30 years of painting – I felt it important to record my own story in my own voice so that it could be passed down through the generations and hopefully give insight and inspiration to others.

I have been transcribing 25 years of art journals, writings, blog posts, gallery descriptions and even post-its! ( I tend to use quite a lot of these in the studio to quickly record insights)

I’m being very thorough in my approach and am grouping my works into collections sometimes with text, sometimes not – leaving it up to you the viewer to experience.

The process is different to painting and the best time to do it for me is first thing in the morning then go for a run before I start painting.

Working in lino cut recently creating a shield as part of a series of magical objects exhibited in TAW Gallery

102 cm by 128 cm

Acrylic on canvas

40cm by 40cm

acrylic on canvas

Just delivered these two paintings to the Civic for Holmfirth Artweek and managed to avoid a downpour.

Good to be physically exhibiting again and great to show at Holmfirth after quite a gap.

Artweek is on until the 8th July.

Growing collection of work that I have the idea of drawing together in a book.

Again I am working on a huge scale , well as big as my studio can hold from floor to ceiling. I’m using unstretched canvas pinned out and primed. Continuing my work with giant gestural female figures that seem to flow and fuse with the land and cosmos. This one’s a four-monther – I can tell.

The female gaze within and without.

I went to a lecture at Salford about this subject which I found fascinating – it’s something you can relate to if your studio is in your house or garden. My practice is punctuated by putting washing on , then the ding of the machine when it’s done, putting the washing out, bringing it in, dishing it out to my children, making lunches, cooking; domesticity. Also the time between 7:40 am and 3:40 pm when the children leave the house and return is key working time and the knowledge of this seems to intensify and focus me on the Work. It’s a fine balance and I tend to use these domestic rhythms as short breaks in focus then back to (literally) the big picture.

I have finally finished working on the virtual art gallery which has four rooms and is on an art island. I’ve created four different collections:

Creativity unravelled….

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Layering on the underpaint using washes and texturing/ patterning the surface with recycled plastic wrapping

Stippling over it creating cosmic nebula clouds inspired by some of the NASA archive photos

Upending the tiniest paintbrush and using the fine stick end to dot stars on

Most recent inspiration is to use iridescent paint rather than white to lighten and give a sheen to the surpaint.

You Can’t Kill the Spirit is inspired by the protest song sung at Greenham Common and sung to me by my Goddess Mother as she remembered her experiences there with my mother:

You can’t kill the Spirit
She is like a mountain
Old and strong
She goes on and on and on

It has been a source of inspiration as I develop this body of work.

I have finally finished this huge unstretched canvas – it’s taken four months.

These are some notes I made as I created this work:

• NOVEMBER:
• It’s like the chaos of the earth – I’m trying to make beautiful sense of it and find my way through perceived pathways
• Mapping the Soul
• It could take months to make aesthetic sense of this( it did!)
• DECEMBER
• I need to get the deep red and purple roots of the thing on almost like a development of soulseed painting
• Elements of galaxies, growth and a flurry of wings.
• The galaxy is an area of it like a shard or upside-down mountain
• Today is about swoops of gold
• I feel like I am painting Kali Yuga
• There are three states/ Muses of transformation dancing towards the Moon.
• Like an eruption
• I’ve got the dancing form of the thing on
• Don’t push it! Emphasise the flow
• This is how I find myself again!
• Titles are like riddles- I’m not here to explain, but create mystery work open to interpretation.
• Transformation and mystery of the Cosmos
• JANUARY
• Layering on the deep undertones
• There’s a process of refinement going on
• Trying to come up with a process that works
• This painting is going somewhere very gradually….
• I started today invaded by distracting thoughts, but with persistence in painting , just keeping going, I have vanquished them
• Trying to do it like pieces of a puzzle in a way. So focus on small parts of the painting. Having faith that the whole is greater than the sum of it’s parts
• Creative ways of Protest
• Trying to get something of the Spirit, the dance, interconnectedness and transformation
• Ancient connections to the moon too and triple Goddess elements
• Something older than Patriarchy
• It’s like the birth of new beings across an everchanging Cosmos
• Painting the brimy cosmic ocean
• I feel like it’s morphing into being now
• A key element seems to have occurred today with one figure-the fiery seed woman overlaps the Cosmic-coming-into-being woman
• Starry weave is yet to be completed
• It is coming into being
• It takes the time it takes
• FEBRUARY
• Making the gateway with drips where the Moon is and the yellow figure
• This painting evolves as I do – it’s a symbolic process
• I feel I may be finished by Spring Equinox
• She is cradling a spiral galaxy – the birth of a galaxy
• I am only seeing this painting one stage at a time. It is a like a cosmic birth. The birth of a star. Star Maps.