Collection: Keith Athay

Keith (affectionately known as Kitt) has been an established seascape and abstract artist for over 20 years, exhibiting his contemporary collages extensively in the UK, and also internationally, in New York and the Hamptons, San Francisco, Hong Kong and Singapore.

Kitt had what he describes as a ‘Huck Finn’ childhood in Somerset, which set his lifelong passion for being outdoors. An innate love of experimenting with different textures and materials turned him into an artist at a young age, and he studied at Bath College and the University of South Wales.

His enthusiasm for watersports and love of the sea has drawn him to the Isle and Royal Manor of Portland in Dorset where he has become a welcome and recognised resident artist. Living an almost ‘off-grid’ lifestyle on his boat has provided him with the skills to venture along the coastline of the South and Southwest of England where he finds inspiration for his unique style of vintage collage paintings.

Kitt attaches materials such as sheet music, historic maps, poems, botanical diagrams and newspaper cuttings to canvases to create a background for his artwork. The viewer initially sees a coastal scene, often a West Country fishing port or harbour, but on closer inspection they discover a whole world of text and illustration lying beneath the paint layers, exciting the senses and taking them on a voyage of discovery and limitless adventure.