KITTY RICE
My recent work is about a child’s intrigue of adult femininity. The imagery can sometimes be of a specific sensation, like a Mother’s hand on a child’s knee or the glint of light on a plastic toy kitchen surface. It can also be about a familiar space or a scene from a film which has reminded me of that expectant grasp on the adult world.
“I work in monotone washes of gouache. I'm trying to depict varied visual languages of memory, whether in clear pixels, like nostalgic photographs, or loose and blurry, like a more distant thought.”
I am often working from film stills, considering the crop of a composition as a way of possessing that memory. If I’m working from imagination, I try to include details like surface patterns, objects or limbs from life to ground the image in a vivid reality.
I am based in a studio in South Bermondsey in an old textile factory. There’s lots of light which helps with considering colour carefully and observing shadow closely if I’m working from life.
I have been experimenting with painting onto stretched women’s clothes and silk. Touch is another part of this nostalgia so it’s interesting to me if the object itself re-enforces this memory.
Kitty Rice has a Diploma from Royal Drawing School, 2021-2022 and a BFA from University of the Arts London, 2011-2015. Recent exhibitions include Best of the Drawing Year, Christie’s Auction House, London, 2022; In Dream in Colour, Greatorex St. Studios, London, 2021; Supernature, The Garden Museum, London, 2021; Lockdown London, Vaults Projects, London, 2021; Women on the Edge of Time, No Es Una Galería, Mexico City, Mexico, 2019; Carpa, Santa Maria La Ribera, Mexico City, Mexico, 2019; Baaq Event, Modo Habita, Mexico City, Mexico, 2018.
