Web site! Kirsteen.Art

I have launched a new website to view, like, share and buy my art!

See it here:
https://www.kirsteen.art

Original artwork by Kirsteen Lyons-Benson (BA Hons)
Mixed media on paper.

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 Muraspec (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.

After designing fashion fabrics for Amanda Kelly Design Studios for a few years, she has recently made the switch back to interior fabrics and wallpaper and signed with an established and prestigious studio in Europe.

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 the last two years travelling Spain, France and Portugal on a camper van!

Kirsteen creates original paintings inspired by nature and travel. She has painted and designed all her life, at no time is she more herself than with brush in hand, or a sticky juice carton and shoes belonging to her kids! 😂💙🎨✏️

Contact info:
Kirsteen Lyons (BA Hons)
+44 7799201417
kirsteenann@gmail.com
Facebook:
https://m.facebook.com/KirsteenBenson
Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/artdreamsgallery

Youtube:
https://m.youtube.com/user/kirsteenartwork/videos

Blogs:

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

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

Read about my travel and some artwork:
http://feelcreaterepeat.blogspot.com

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

New blog by Kirsteen Lyons, Feel. Create. Repeat.

If you like what you see on this blog, you can find more current work and ideas by Kirsteen Lyons at:

https://feelcreaterepeat.blogspot.co.uk

Dear Single Parents,

Dear Single Parents and those who criticise them,

I have been meaning to write something about being a single mum for some time and today a thing happened to crystallise the intention. I ordered breakfast for me and my kids and my card got declined – twice. I paid cash and went back to the table a bit worried. This is my point just a bit worried, no hart stopping fear that my imperfectly balanced world was crashing down, no suppressed tears in a public place, no colour draining from my face.

You are going to say I am too dramatic but I never thought I would be one of those single mums you read about, you know the evil host who are bringing the nation to its knees. I’m nice, I’m sensible; once upon a time I had loved my husband. Well it happens to lots of people, and it’s not really the poverty that gets to you it’s the fear. I couldn’t shake the idea I was £200 away from the street...£200 away from the street...£200 away from the street... like an anti-mantra playing in my head.

This would be about the time Her Majesties Inland Revenue and Customs (HMRC) decided I was lying about my ex-husband having moved out and I should pay back more than £7,000. I can tell you that my terror was absolute. Because I was committing “fraud” they stopped all my help and I ran up an overdraught of £2,000 paying rent and living while I could at least prove we did not live together now. I never managed to pay off the overdraught because while money you owe HMRC can be backdated years, money they owe you can only be backdated 6 weeks. I continued to pay £32 pounds on overdraught interest for the remainder to the time I was a single parent.

But what of the £7,000? I fought it for three years and had to borrow the money from my ex-in-laws (thank heavens my divorce was amicable) to prevent bailiffs coming for our stuff before the appeal was completed then the appeal finally found that I was telling the truth all along and I got the money back. I was unlucky I hear you say, well then how come I don’t know any single parent who has NOT had their help suddenly reduced or stopped for complicated and often false reasons?

I should have worked I hear you say, well I was 16 hours a week and my daughter was not yet school age, but believe me I ran the maths on working more 7,000 times! I could have got a local job but with child care I would have been about £15 a week better off, and seen little of my child. Use your degree and get a well paid job you say, well that means London and more child care and the cost of the commute.... there is a reason they call it the poverty TRAP.

I was very lucky, friends and family helped me to an extent I found astonishing and I am forever grateful. Even so it’s not quite the same as another parent, someone else fully responsible for your child who may be coming home late, but they will be coming home eventually, the stress on single parents fees like it is just you between your child and a hostile and critical world, perhaps forever! Rest is scarce, and because of finance guilt free rest is nonexistent, illness simply not an option (some of you thought being ill was not voluntary didn’t you?).

So my point is this, if you are currently a single parent I think you might possibly still be a worthwhile person, it is possible you are not be a waster lolling about in your benefit luxury. It is even possible that you are not one of the main reasons my taxes are so high, or my sense of national identity is being eroded. Basically, hang in there seven, ten or twenty years you will get through it.

Love and respect, Kirsteen

Exhibitions, community art protects, Markets, Fairs and studios with Kitty Atkinson-Guy and Kirsteen Benson

I had to go through a lot of old DVDs of artwork today, and I was really struck by how many projects I have done over the years with my Mum: Kitty Atkinson-Guy.
Exhibitions, fairs, businesses, studios, community art projects, children's human rights education using art and more.... Here is a taster. Thank you Kitty you are a brilliant artist. :)

Kirsteen Benson BA (Hons)
www.enchantedtextiledesign.com

Human Rights Education:

A few Exhibitions (by no means all):

Pottery, ceramics:

Markets and fairs (by no means all):

Other community art projects (by no means all):

Thank-you. Kirsteen

www.enchantedtextiledesign.com

 

Award Winning Designer Launches Enchanted Textile Design

Information Release: For immediate use

Award Winning Designer Launches Enchanted Textile Design

Enchanted Textile Design Launched in Sussex

Enchanted Textile Design Making a Mark in Sussex

Award-winning Sussex-based textile designer, Kirsteen Benson BA (Hons) is now launching her new Spring & Summer collection. Exciting, sensual and delicate could be some of the adjectives that best describe her latest collection. As Director and founder of Sussex-based Enchanted Textile Design, Kirsteen is busy making her mark with her new range of joyful florals.

Kirsteen Benson's passion for design is intrinsically interwoven with her artistic background: born and raised in the Scottish highlands in an artisan family craft pottery business run by her father, Alastair Hodgson MA Hons (Etching) and Kitty Atkinson MA Hons (Stainglass & Murals.) Kirsteen is a doubly gifted designer: where inherent artistic ability meets a driving self-determinism to strive professionally for the best one can create. So often, our backgrounds help to forge our own career paths and Kirsteen's exceptional educational journey is one of not only overcoming personal barriers to studying - she was diagnosed with dyslexia from a young age – and went on to surpass at academic A Levels and then acceptance into one of the finest Scottish Textile & Design Schools at Edinburgh's Heriot-Watt University.

Kirsteen Benson won 2 awards as an undergraduate: joint first prize-winner of an industrial competition for Muraspec Wallcoverings UK, (one of the Hilton Hotel chain's preferred wallcoverings design company) and 1^st Prize-winner of an industrial competition for Morton Yong & Borland. This was a prize for the best of Madras lace design and was added to their collection. Muraspec judges noted the excellence of Kirsteen's work which had been so highly placed due to its relevance and applicability of her response to the brief,

“There are people out there making good livings with far inferior products”. Kirsteen was then offered the coveted position of New Product Development Coordinator Muraspec, which she undertook in style.

The pioneering attitude fostered at Heriot-Watt – they welcomed women students as early as 1869, 20 years ahead of most others – was no doubt the perfect environment for Kirsteen's artistic abilities to shine and shine she did. Kirsteen distinguished herself at University by being one of only a few students in the country to have work exhibited at Scotland's most well-known centre for Design and Architecture: Glasgow’s flagship “Lighthouse Design Centre”.

Since leaving university, Kirsteen has since exhibited in an impressive array of galleries and venues from Scotland to East Sussex: the Islington Exhibition Centre: London, Birmingham's Gallery of Contemporary Art and City Theatre, Tilgate Park in Crawley and many others. Yet the exhibition at the Lighthouse Design Centre remains her most prized.

More recently, Kirsteen was the brains behind the Crawley Craft Fair – with over 300 artists and small business owners and has now teamed up with Jenny Frank BA Hons Woven Textile Design, and is busy preparing the Paris launch of “Enchanted Textile Design” with a team of professional designers, sales and administrative personnel freelancing under Kirsteen’s management. Kirsteen's aim is to continue the rich heritage of British florals, isolating the importance of colour and vibrancy which is a trademark of her textiles. 'I want to enhance the too often grey backcloth of the city with colourful floral designs.' Kirsteen lives & works in East Grinstead with her totally creative, source of inspiration daughter, Jasmine.

Kirsteen Benson is available for media interviews and is contactable by e-mail: kirsteenbenson@yahoo.co.uk

or mobile: 07799201417

Links:

www.enchantedtextiledesign.com

www.crawleycraftfair.co.uk

School of Textile & Design, Heriot Watt University:

http://www.tex.hw.ac.uk/index.htm

Gallery of Contemporary Art, Birmingham

http://www.artsbma.org/collection/contemporary-art

http://craftpottery.blogspot.com.au/

Lovely Printed Textile Design

www.enchantedtextiledesign.com

Crawley Craft Fair is for Sale.

Crawley Craft Fair consists of three or four fairs a year making approximately £1,000 per fair but only taking 10 to 15 hours work per fair.

It has just finished  its fourth successful year and is very well loved in its community.
What you get: A fair established in Queens Square, Crawley’s busiest shopping location.
A fair with a list of over 300 artists and small business owners who have enquired about stalls or attended.

A Fair with an established reputation which has been in all Crawley’s papers as well as favorably reviewed on craft fair sites and forums. A fair with a professional, web site, logo and leaflet design. Full training in how to run the fair by Kirsteen Benson.