Katie Buckett. Tessellate

About

Katie Buckett’s wide-eyed faces, elongated necks, and accentuated angles are placed against a backdrop of luxurious wallpapers reminiscent of a Victorian era. The models are contemporary, (Katie’s friends and family in fact), but she transforms them into timeless beings from another world, staring deeply through the canvas and back at you.

Tessellate is an exciting new exhibition of works by hyper-realist painter, Katie Buckett, opening at Lacey Contemporary Gallery from the 27th April – 14th May 2016. Katie, whose work has been likened to established painter Kehinde Wiley, will be presenting a new series of 10 portraits for this exhibition. Each is painted in her recognizable meticulous style, which highlights and exaggerates particular features of the subject, to create her surreal, almost alien like portraits.

Katie Buckett graduated from the prestigious Pratt Institute in New York in 2007, receiving an honorable mention at the 2007 Senior Class Exhibition. Before moving to the UK, Katie was a proactive member of the New York Arts scene, founding the ‘Hospitium Collective’ one of the first artist-run spaces in Bushwick, New York, as well as curating many exhibitions in the Bushwick open studios. Katie was a key contributor to the growing Bushwick art scene that has now exploded in New York.

Katie describes herself as a realist artist. Her paintings are based on photographic references taken in the artist’s studio and her subjects are a selection of Katie’s wide social circle, which includes fellow artists, musicians, models and creatives. Aspiring for a photo-realism, Katie captures the light and form of her subjects in her initial painting stages, before adding painstaking hyper-realistic detail. These final touches are what take the paintings to a new level of ‘realism’, accentuating details so that they pop from the canvas and transform the paintings from real to surreal.

Katie Buckett’s Tessellate will open at Lacey Contemporary Gallery on Wednesday 27th April with a private view.

For the guest list, enquiries or high-res images, contact tessa@laceycontemporarygallery.co.uk