Art on a Postcard for War Child UK

About 

Charlie Calder-Potts is a British artist based in UK. Her work looks at history and its repetitive nature; the value of our heritage and our similarities to previous generations and to each other. She is a mixed media artist working with aluminium, wasli, wood panel and vellum (calf skin); combining photography, painting and drawing.  

Charlie has had many notable exhibitions and commissions both in the UK and abroad. Previous projects include her selection as an Official War Artist with the British Army in Afghanistan 2013/14, private commissions in Iraq in 2015 and Tajikistan in 2016, a collaborative project sponsored by The British Arts Council in Iran, 2017/18 and Russia 2018/19. In May 2021 she was awarded the QEST scholarship (Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust) for her project in Pakistan. This new body of work was exhibited in her most recent solo show, 'The world was all before them' (September 2022). 

Education 

Self taught 

Select Exhibitions/Awards 

Daler Rowney Prize 2023,  

QEST Award (Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust) 2021,  

AIDF Grant from the British Arts Council 2017, Official War Artist with the British Army in Afghanistan 2013 

Statement about AOAP Submitted Artwork   

‘Those that never fade II’ takes its title from the ‘Epic of Gilgamesh’...the first and oldest recorded flood story written nearly 4000 years ago...there were many more to follow. The title itself demonstrates how a story can be passed on, repackaged and resold to suit a new audience, a new age. I am obsessed by the timeless nature of the story; any story. Storytelling will always, in some way, be a repeat of history. Whilst my work illustrates a number of ancient techniques (grinding gold leaf to gold ink learnt from icon painter Vladimir Bushcov in Russia, making my own kalam paintbrush from squirrel hair and a pigeon feather learnt from miniature painter Heraa Khan in Pakistan) it is a tapestry of era’s. The characters depicted are real, faces from the ‘here and now’ photographed by me all over the world; from the streets of London and Lahore to the souks of Samarkand and Damascus. The pieces are in a sense an immediate form of reportage, people captured going about their everyday; the routine of life. Yet it is in their ‘everyday’ that we find the timeless; echoes of stories from long ago, forever repeated and adapted, a reflection of humanity itself. My work is a palimpsest between past and present...the practice itself built by the collaborations and experiences I have had with other creatives around the world. 

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