Kay Boyce

Kay Boyce was born in Sheffield and Studied Illustration at college for four years before working as a freelance illustrator producing editorial work for Woman’s Weekly, Bella, My Weekly, Sunday Express and Woman’s Own.

Her illustration work has carried her through to major book publishers such as Hodder & Staughton, Wordsworth Romantics, Mills & Boon and Mandarin. During this period, she also produced fine art paintings and drawings that have been sold at various galleries and exhibitions around the UK including, The AOI Gallery and Barbican Centre, London and The Science & Industry Museum, Manchester. Her paintings have also been sold in the USA and Europe. In 1999 Kay exhibited her work at the Sheffield Art Show and her originals fetched record prices.

She completed a project for RADA, which included portraits of 23 famous actors and actresses with the final work being assessed and approved by Sir Richard Attenborough. Recognition for her talent arrived with Kay being voted a finalist for the Fine Art Trade Guild’s Best-Selling Artist Award in both 2001 and 2002.

As a child she would often spend hours at a time drawing on rolls of wallpaper; this was the beginning of her passion for drawing.

Kay’s career as an Artist has flourished; her pastels and pencil drawings have become instantly recognisable. Kay is often to be found working in her studio at her home in the Glyn Morlas valley, near Oswestry, with the background voices of Radio Four.

Friends, acquaintances and sometimes herself often model for her graceful studies of the female form. Kay has the petite form of a dancer. She trained in ballet and contemporary dance; it is this that has given her an insight into her subject and an aptitude for reproducing it. In Kay’s own words ‘There is nothing quite like the feeling and movement of dance’: in latter years Kay has taken up salsa dancing!

It is her empathy for the female form in movement, combined with a love of original Victorian clothes and antiques which she collects that inspire her to produce the soft, yet sensual images that have become her trademark. There is a fine line between eroticism and sensuality and Kay achieves the right balance. Kay also draws inspiration, from famous works such as those by Edgar Degas, Botticelli and Almer Tasimer: their use of composition and how they portray the texture in their materials intrigue her.

Kay rarely titles her images herself, although there is one particular title that holds a place in her heart: ‘Little Lizzy’, this is the pet name her Father gave her when she was a young girl.

It is Kay’s ambition to live in France. It is the way of life, the food, the people and the space that appeal to her. The warm weather of Bordeaux is a world away from the windswept rainy valleys of the Shropshire Dales, in which Kay spends her pastime walking.

Kay hopes to try her hand at oil painting and sculpture ‘you get such richness and depth with oils. I feel the subject matter would lend itself well. I would love to sculpt semi nudes, probable the female form, but possibly male, too!’