Katy Bailey Featured in Painters Online

‘Blend’

When did you first start painting and how did you discover pastel as a medium?

I feel like I have always painted. As children it was either drawing, dressing up or playing in the garden.

When we were young children we would visit maternal grandparents in Holland for 6 weeks every summer.
The first thing Oma would do when she picked us up from the airport was to drive us to the supermarket to buy sketchbooks and pencils.

When I was 9 a wonderful teacher called Mr Jackson held up a drawing I had done of a hare in crayons, my path was set in that moment.

I went to Cambridge art school, 1978-82, to study Illustration and Graphics, the life drawing room was my favourite room,
this was where I first discovered charcoal and compressed charcoal. As I got braver I started to add colour with pastels.

There was something about the immediacy of picking up a colour,
holding it in your hand and putting it straight to paper. It was four years of drawing and experimenting.
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