Di Kaye

Diane (Di) Melville Kaye was born in November 1944 as the first daughter to Bernard and Georgina Wright in Leicester. Di’s childhood was influenced by her father, his love of nature, and his ability to describe the birds, flowers and trees that they saw during their Sunday afternoon walks. He was an avid model maker with an eye for detail, and when Di first started drawing, he cast a very critical eye over her work, which led Di to strive to be a perfectionist in her work.
When Di left school at 15, her father took some of her work to a Printing firm in Leicester who were looking for a new apprentice. She was offered the job straight away and the firm arranged for her to attend Leicester College of Art on a day release basis. After 3 years of study, she gained a National Diploma in Figure Drawing and Graphics in 1963 and went on to specialise in botanical work.
The next 20 years were predominantly involved with raising a family of 2 girls and 2 boys (one of which is also a talented artist) and selling paintings to pay for family holidays etc. Following the children leaving home, Di decided to explore Europe and spent time in Portugal clearing Eucalyptus trees and re-discovering her love of painting by supplementing her income through selling watercolours of local scenes. On her return to England, she met her current partner, Peter, who encouraged her to continue with the painting. Concentrating on Botanical, Art Nouveau and Fairy pictures, she established some outlets in shops and started exhibiting at Craft Fairs around the local area with some success.
A surprise visit to the Art Deco Exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum led to a major turning point in her career. Totally inspired by the style, cut and feminity of the Art Deco Period, (1923-1938), Di took careful notes on the cut of the clothes. In her words, “the Art Deco Exhibition opened my eyes to the elegance of the fashion of the period.” She returned and began sketching ideas before commencing on her first full length design of a lady in black with a Scottie dog – which was immediately named “Darcey.” “Vivian” was to follow; a head and shoulder study of a woman in fox fur, which was very difficult to create to capture the texture of the fur. A lot of time was spent experimenting with different mediums to create the right effect and style that she wanted to achieve. The result of these experiments was to combine mediums so that she ended up with flawless complexions and tactile fur and fabrics combined with very stylised clean lines. Her former training can be seen in the fine detail of the fingers, eye lashes etc of the paintings. The original drawings were refined many times to eliminate excessive lines to produce a very simple, clean finished piece with a limited colour palette.
The first 2 pieces as mounted prints were taken to a Craft Fair and again, a chance meeting with a young picture framer who happened to have 2 Art Deco style frames allowed the opportunity to sell the prints as framed pictures. They sold within 10 minutes and Di knew that she had found the required formula to display her artwork as the selection of the “right” frame enhances the artwork. Since then the same framer continues to make all her frames.
After this success, the following 6 months were spent designing and creating a collection of Art Deco Fashion Prints. These included a series with “Ladies and their Dogs” where the dogs were designed as fashion accessories and the clothes were designed to match the dogs. These have proved to be very popular with the public and have led to several commissions for Crufts over the last 4 years from different Dog Clubs and Associations.
A series of “Ladies in Evening Gowns” followed to some acclaim, especially from the public who some believed Di to be a Dress Designer as well as an artist. The cut of the clothes are such that they could be made and worn even today.
The next stage was to publicise her work to a larger audience by participating in much larger Shows and Events. To aid this process, Di decided to design a strikingly new original concept. She created 2 new designs on a black background in silver and gold. This involved further experimentation to determine how the flawless complexions could be reproduced on black leading to several layers of colour while maintaining the simple, clean cut lines. The addition of “sparkle” to the gowns and latterly the use of Swarovski Crystal™ for the original pieces has led to another chapter in Di’s developing work. The crystal is facetted, similar to a diamond and thus reflects light from wherever it can be gathered. In this way, pieces can either be lit directly or allowed to capture natural light themselves, although direct sunlight is not recommended for any piece of artwork. These pieces have proved to be very popular and are something that is totally originally within the current crowded art market. This has led to several major commissions and offers of exhibition space as well as commercial interest from dealers, galleries and picture framers. Original paintings vary in size from 33 x 25cms up to 1200 x 1000cms.
Di takes on the story further. “Soon after this, I met an old lady at a Show who related a delightful episode from her childhood. At the age of four, she was hidden within a large cardboard card as a surprise to the birthday host. She remembered bursting out into a room full of beautiful ladies, dressed in silver and black and the flash of diamonds around the room. She told me that ‘it was my paintings that had brought her to a dead stop in front of the stand and brought back a memory that had been forgotten for nearly 80 years.’ We both had tears in our eyes.”
Di has held exhibitions in the West Midlands and her home town of Stamford, and has also been the Featured Artist in 2006 at the St Gemmas Hospice Art Exhibition having been unanimously chosen by the public and the selection committee from the previous year.
Over the past few years pieces have become very collectable and are shipped all over the world. There is now a range of figurines which feature on our own website at www.dikaye.com and these are soon to be expanded. Di has also teamed up with Card Creations to launch her designs for the card-making market and 3 CDs have been launched on Creat and Craft TV Channel with a fourth due out shortly – again available on our website. The latest is the release of some of the designs as rubber stamps, again for the card-making market. Di has a gallery in Delray Beach in Florida that stock her paintings and will be exhibiting at the “Queen Mary Art Deco Weekend “ in Long Beach California on Labour Day weekend, 2010.

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