Richard Kaye Art – SaltHouse, St. Ives

Architectural prints, meet abstract landscapes!

Richard Kaye, Recent Work 2017-2021

Richard has been living in the South West for 15 years. Prior to art he had an interesting career in music, which involved a year touring the world with the rock band Ash as their scratch DJ. During this time Richard played on the main stage at Glastonbury and appeared on Top of the Pops.

Richard is candid about enjoying some subject matters which most people and artists would tend to ignore.

He trained at Bournemouth College of Art where he focussed on drawing and painting. Taking inspiration from the landscape around him, he has become fascinated by portraying what he sees in a compelling way.

The images tend to be very bold and distinctive, with some of the more urban subjects being somewhat unexpected. Richard takes pleasure in finding strong compositions and angular forms within subjects which are often missed or ignored.

In the last few year’s Richard has started to work on a larger scale, with screen prints which he hand tints using watercolour. The most recent of these focus on brutalist architecture. The colours he is using now have moved away from the more subdued pastel tones toward a brighter complementary range as well as neons. These images are really angular, edgy and bold.

Most recently painting has been the main focus for Richard, becoming totally immersed in creating a series of abstract landscapes focusing closely on colour balance and composition to engage the viewer. Some of the landscapes are heavily influenced by the surrounding area, especially the coastline, seaside towns and cliffs around Lyme Regis. The most recent series are like magnified versions of his earlier work, the colours and shapes have become more bold, angular and severe in a bid to win the viewers attention.

He has also recently worked a series of drawings of brutaliust architecture, focusing mainly on stairways. These are very detailed and realistic which pushed Richard to break into new techniques within pencil drawing.