Unquit Art, Who is Kirsteen?


Unquit Art:

Who is Kirsteen Lyons-Benson

Kirsteen Lyons is the child of two artists who met at Glasgow art school in the sixties, got married, and fled the city to a remote Scottish island, to live on a beach, in a tent, with two kittens and a chest of drawers!

Growing up in a craft pottery, and later a cottage in the woods, Kirsteen planned to rebel, and have central heating and breakdown cover when she grew up!

Grow up she did, and studied textile design, not fine art (more rebellion). She did very well at university winning two prestigious competitions and getting a job with a wallpaper manufacturer straight out of uni, it was new product development, so she went from there to other innovation companies and tried all sorts of middle class ideas out, including paying a mortgage, and working in PR, but soon found her parents were correct - they are very overrated ideas.

Kirsteen tried selling paintings on line, London markets, starting and running a craft fair, starting a gallery and pottery, starting and running a face painting business, and finally returned to textile design to freelance from home, and be mum to a daughter and a son. Throughout this she has always painted, drawn and had exhibitions. She has taught art to children and adults throughout her career.

After designing fashion fabrics for a few years, she made the switch back to interior fabrics and wallpaper and signed with a design house in Europe.

For two years she created a drawing every day, just for the art of it, practice, effective relief from parenting and simply because it makes her happy. So many people were inspired, uplifted, delighted and wrote to her telling her her art project had made them unquit art, that she wanted to carry the movement forward somehow, the idea for this book started there.

She has now fully come to terms with her hippy origins and feels she belongs in middle class suburban England like a Bengal tiger belongs on a water slide! For this reason Kirsteen spent two winters traveling Spain, France and Portugal in a series of beat up camper vans with her kids and blogging about it. All her underfunded and ill-planned adventures have widened her experience and raised her courage, but most of all taught her that the world has a bright and hopeful face as well as the dark one, and that face of hope can be reflected in the art in our lives, what is more it should be for all our sakes.


You can see art by Kirsteen at:

www.kirsteen.art

Travel blogging:

Art:
http://createadrawingaday.blogspot.co.uk

Textile design:
http://enchantedtextiledesign.blogspot.co.uk

Kids art projects:
http://artistmummy.blogspot.co.uk



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