CFA_Kate_Boxer_24pp new.qxp
23/5/14
Lily Samarine Drypoint and Carborundum 151/4" x 121/2"
06:34
Page 2
Gabriel Samarine Drypoint and Carborundum 151/4" x 121/2"
I think I may count myself as a committed collector of Kate Boxer’s work, a thing I am extremely happy to be.And now I find these people she is presenting quite irresistible.We have lived with Nikolai Gogol for a year or so (who featured in her last exhibition at Cricket Fine Art) and find him the best of company. Kate’s work is artful and instinctively clever.There is a kind of jauntiness and wit to her choice and portrayal of figures whether literary or historical, human or animal but nothing fey. And it is entirely and characteristically original. Her technique is fascinating for the overlap of textures and mediums: prints look like drawings or have surfaces like paintings and paintings show their drawing - (which is a thing to love in Kate’s work) – her alternately scratchy and fluid line which gets the essence of a face or movement and secures the subject on her sheet or canvas with such grace. I love Picasso, Cote d’Azur blue, and at his most simian; an all-seeing Eleanor Roosevelt; Jean Gabin – insouciant and boyish, crease-eyed through the smoke (excellently done); Jean Rhys uncowed, beautiful Willy Landels in his hat and Guy Fawkes who manages to be both scary and scared and I want his ruff. In fact I can’t wait for the opening and to meet them all face to face, even with Saladin and his horse doing their elegant best to chase us away. Alexandra Chaldecott Front cover: Jean Gabin 1904–1976 Mixed Media on Canvas 471/4" x 351/2"