BAY LEES artist

Click on the images below to view a selection of my work.

Particular Places. A shared exhibition with Gabrielle Nesfield, Victoria and Oliver Smith at Keyne's College, Kent University. 2017. A visit to South India retracing family footsteps was the starting point for my work for this exhibition.

A Creative Pilgrimage. In November 2019, a small group of artists started to walk the Augustine Camino together. The walk traced the ancient pilgrims' routes from Rochester to Ramsgate. Covid Lockdown stopped the walks but an exhibition at Chartham Vineyard grew out of the walk, showcasing the diverse work from the seven artists. October 2020.

A Hundred Days of Lockdown. From the beginning of Lockdown in March 2020, I set myself the challenge of doing a drawing a day in an attempt to record the extraordinary time when normal social interaction was stopped due to Covid19. The weather was beautiful and the time allowed me to record the garden during the Spring and Summer months of Lockdown, 2020. The drawings were my way of keeping to normality and gave me a sense of purpose but by flicking through the sketchbook now, I can recognise the growing sense of unease and uncertainty about the virus and about when restrictions to normal life would be lifted.

A Family Conversation Piece: The Covid window. For years I have been planning to create a glass piece for an internal window. Living in a medieval house, I tried to achieve an art piece that would happily sit in the house and add to its numerous stories. Lockdown provided the perfect opportunity and I managed to get it finished and installed without too many difficulties. I have called it The Covid Window because it demonstrates how family life has continued in spite of Covid which I have depicted as a tiny, blue, spiky virus. I particularly love old windows that are created using fragments of coloured glass and I started the project by using pieces of glass that I had previously painted- a copy of part of a window from Cawston Church in Norfolk and a portrait of my siblings. Gradually I added my daughters, their partners and their growing families, attempting to keep to the simplified drawing style of the medieval glass painter. I enjoy the fact that every step of the process is identical to that used by generations of glass artists, from the fired lead painting to the yellow staining of the glass by using powdered silver and the final construction of the window using lead, solder and putty.