HQ - Artwave Festival Show

If Becky Blair were a writer, her style would be described as magical realism, she tells me. “Stories of everyday life shot through with the unexpected”, she adds. “I love to look for beauty in things that are otherwise ordinary.” Most of her work is figurative - moments captured in people’s lives. Her favourite spot for people-watching is the beach. “I think it’s really amusing the way that people behave when they are on the beach”, she says. “They’ll strip off to what’s effectively their underwear and play games and all sorts of things they wouldn’t dream of doing just a few metres away”. She tells me about an Australian advert for ‘budgie smugglers’ - the smallest ‘swimmers’ that a man will wear on the beach. “It was all about beach etiquette - the point where they would turn into pants to the outside world when the context changed, like on a bus. I’m interested in exactly that.” Becky concedes that her artworks are ‘feel-good’. “They’re meant to be positive”. And they have a ‘vague narrative’ which leaves space for the viewer to fill in the blanks. “Some of them are intimate moments like a parent with a child, others are cheeky like a group of girls casually checking some guys out.” There’s something rather timeless about the scenes, too, I venture. “Yes. Some of them are more firmly rooted in context like a picture I did about teenagers but the figures themselves - and their outfits mostly suggest themselves as I work.” Becky’s work will be exhibited at HQ alongside Kate Montgomery who produces highly detailed Medieval-influenced paintings, and pieces by abstract landscape artists Beth Wintgens and Chris McHugh. ER