Life on Venus III | The Organic, Live Auction

Grace Crabtree, from Dorset, UK, graduated from the Ruskin School of Art, Oxford in 2019 and is currently doing the Turps Banana Correspondence Course (2020-21). She explores figurative painting, primarily investigating a fragmentary approach to narrative time and space which shifts between historical and contemporary references. Drawing from the traditions of fresco and icon painting, she often works with egg tempera, involving the grinding of pigments and layering of colour. This slow time of making, and the engagement with a traditional technique, feeds into an ambiguous sense of time in the work.

This piece comes from a recent series called 'Fragmented Inflorescence' (inflorescence being the flowering or blossoming of flowers on a stem), drawing and painting from a collection of dried wildflowers and grasses in Grace's studio. The plants are dissected or deconstructed within the compositions, the details unfolding into partially abstract forms.