KATY SLEIGHT’S STEYNING:
SEEING WITH AN ILLUSTRATOR’S EYE
 
An exhibition of watercolour paintings
of Steyning and the locality
by Katy Sleight

These are beautifully executed and highly individual paintings. Look more closely and there are marvellous stories revealed in the smallest scale. To help you to see all the intriguing detail in the pictures, the Museum is providing magnifying glasses.

Katy has lived most of her life locally and has absorbed the feel and essence of Steyning, which she portrays with an illustrator’s eye. She has also chosen objects and images from the Museum alongside several from her own family collection, to set her paintings in context. This is much more than a display of watercolours alone.

Katy’s versatility is demonstrated by some of her book illustration work. Her unique book ‘Devilish Tricks and Deadly Sins’, an amazing version of Chaucer’s ‘Canterbury Tales’, is included in the exhibition. The Museum is providing visitors with the opportunity to see and enjoy the full range of her illustrations by turning over to fresh pages of this volume every few days.
 
The artist says of her work that it records the present with an awareness of the past, combining history and imagination with close observation and fine brushwork. She finds inspiration in the trees, ancient stones and brickwork, old sheds and outbuildings - depicting the plants and small creatures that make their homes in and around them, together with something of the people who have been there before.

Once seen, Katy Sleight's pictures haunt the memory and leave you with visions and insights which will change the way you see our ordinary world forever.