Black, British and Blackpool-based artist Dee Kozo is currently displaying her debut full solo exhibition at Hive Arts. David Simper popped along to the regular Saturday morning HIVE Jive social to view the exhibition and chat to the artist about her work.
The size, material choice and subject vary across Dee Kozo’s accomplished exhibition, Diaspora. Some of the pieces might actually fit in my limited wall space, which is worth a thought. Dee is a Black British artist and teacher living and working in Blackpool and is known for her striking portraits. She draws on her Zambian heritage together with her British upbringing to inform her art. She believes that art is for everyone and she likes to draw out people’s creative potential.
The HIVE jive event was busy with new faces and plenty of chat, which was good to see. Dee was generally deep in conversation, but gradually people went off to their other pursuits and I was able to speak to her.
Tell us about the process by which this exhibition has come together.
“I’ve always been creative, I loved art at school,” she said “I wanted to study art but then went travelling. So at that time I never made art my career, I fell into other things. When I became pregnant, I reconnected with it all and it spiralled from there and I became obsessed with art again.
“It gradually built and built, from doing it on the sidelines for a while, and it’s become a full time job now. Last year I decided I really wanted to put out an exhibition and show my work as a collection. I’d been in exhibitions before, but I really wanted to have a solo exhibition, to platform myself really, so that’s what we have here.”
How do you select the materials for your pieces?
“There’s a bit of everything really – I like to experiment. I really enjoy painting, so I tend to use acrylic paint and I do a bit of watercolour as well. My watercolours tend to be smaller scale, in my sketchbook for small-scale work. I don’t really have it niched down, I suppose you’d say – I don’t really think that I have one distinct style, I have lots of things that I enjoy.
“I know you’re told you should have a distinct style, but I’d get bored if I just did the same thing all the time. I love the process of creating art, not just having a nice finished piece – sometimes something doesn’t look that great, but the journey you had in creating it is worthwhile. Something you thought was going to be terrible ends up being really impactful.”
Tell me about this distinctive trio of works (pictured above)?
“These works are my nostalgia collection. The one at the end [right] is an imagining, a memory from childhood – Sunday nights were hair washing nights. I’m one of three and I have two older sisters. Mum would wash, oil and braid our hair, so that painting is basically an imagining of that. The one next to it (middle) is titled ‘Little Mary’ and is my sister in the early ’80s. The one to the left is my mum and sister in the late ’70s. These two are from pictures from our family album – our favourite pictures from youth. The late ’70s shot was taken in Zambia – the photographer had it up in his studio window, a gorgeous photo that’s very evocative for me. When you see the image it’s sepia – a lovely, impactful picture from childhood.”
What is your favourite piece from your current collection?
“‘Little Mary’ is one of my favourites, it always makes me smile – also the ‘Botanical Goddess’, which was one of a series of three. I sold the first one and I probably let it go for too little. Another favourite is around the corner, ‘Boring Brown Eyes’. That was a moment I was incensed by this man’s stupidity on the ‘Love is Blind’ reality TV programme. The guy meets the girl he’s supposedly fallen in love with and he said, ‘What colour are your eyes? Oh, boring brown!’, and ths girl was floored. He was so dismissive of her, you could tell he wasn’t attracted to her. So I immediately looked up a picture of this girl, zoomed in and painted her eyes, which are beautiful and anything but ‘boring brown’.”
So what’s the future for your artistic career?
“I want to keep creating, I am really passionate about art – but not just art but any creative endeavour. I love craft, dance, singing. It’s really powerful to connect with your inner child, so for me art is massively my inner child – it really does bring me joy, it makes me feel good, it reconnects me to myself. The way we live now, we’re so engaged online, it’s draining. So to be doing something in the moment with your mind connected to your hands, and to produce something that your eyes can see and you can feel, I think it’s a lovely process.
“I teach workshops and art classes; I really like to spread the creativity message and encourage people to reconnect with creative things. I want to continue with that, keep making art, hopefully sell a bit more.”
Many thanks to Dee for granting these insights into her work and her deep commitment to creativity, not only for herself but for others too. Her exhibition continues at the HIVEArts gallery until 22nd February 2025.
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