Hey everyone, its Kirath here! When writing about my paintings they are so personal that it wouldn’t have felt right discussing this from a third person perspective, so here I am, hey. I hope you are all enjoying seeing my my original artworks and paintings, they truly have been a breath of fresh air over the last couple of months.
I would say lockdown 2020 has been surprising in many ways and the time it gave me to sit back and reflect on who I am as a designer/artist was welcomed. Over the past nine years I have loved building my own little brand, it’s my space to explore my creativity with pattern and colour and my personal outlet for expressing the world around me visually. Without it I would be lost - it’s like therapy! Running a business, there are so many aspects from commercialising your product to dealing with admin, emails, sales, building new client relationships, trade shows etc and so much more. As much as I enjoy that side, the design aspect of my job (the bit I LOVE) is minimal and other tasks take precedence. I wake up in the middle of the night with all these creative mad ideas for a new wallpaper/fabric collections and get them all noted down! This book is full of pattern ideas, colour ways and designs I want to explore, but like many people that run small businesses it boils down to finding the time and sometimes the motivation when you are bogged down with other tasks.
Around the end of March 2020 I went out for a walk and stumbled across my old college and particularly where I studied my A-Level Art and Art Foundation course, Claremont, Queen Elizabeth Sixth Form College in Darlington, UK. . Those days were some of my best, I was a messy artist working with large scale canvases (the confidence I had to be expressive was immense, I was only 16-18 years old during this study period). I worked with acrylic and screen print in a collaged abstract way. I remember bringing all these massive canvases home, which took over the house. Being back at Claremont brought back feelings of nostalgia from pure happiness, an urge to pick up a paintbrush again and just get messy. I wanted to paint without thinking about commercialisation of turning this into a wallpaper or fabric design. So without thinking to deeply into it, I bought acrylics, paper and paintbrushes and got to work, music on, playing with colour and layering. I’ve fallen back in love with it all and I’ve reignited my 16 year old artsy self!
Whenever I’m feeling anxious or unsettled I’ve found painting and drawing to be form of creative therapy, especially over the last couple of months due to Covid. I’m in my happy space when I’m painting and often forgot about everything else in life that’s going on, for a small time. Keeping them as original artworks is extremely important to me, as they represent a moment in time and how I was feeling on a particular day in my life. It’s funny how people view the world, well generally I know that mine is very colourful.
So I dug out a few throwbacks of the paintings and canvases I created during college, nearly 21 years ago! This is a little sneak peek into the olden KG days, so glad I took pictures then. I remember the awards I won, from best Lino Print at GCSE and best A-Level Art Exhibition, I was chuffed. Years later, to go on and be nominated for Best Young Designer, Homes and Garden and my dream nomination for an ELLE Decoration British Design award wasn’t too bad to all! It’s been a journey and so happy to be back painting. Thankyou to everyone that has supported and bought a piece, it means the absolute world to me. With love KG X
