Life on Venus | The Landscape, Timed Auction
08 DECEMBER 2020 - 14 DECEMBER 2020Notes
"I am a graduate of Fine Art (Painting and Printmaking) from the Glasgow School of Art and subsequently completed a masters degree in Visual Communication at The Royal College of Art in London.
Working mainly in watercolour, I depict ambiguous moments in time, in what are otherwise, ordinary domestic scenes. My interest in narrative and the complexities of human relationships lead her paintings to conjure a feeling of the uncanny, a particular atmosphere that shifts between comfort and familiarity and a sense of melancholy and foreboding. There is a deadpan humour to the work which mean that the feeling of melancholy or malice is deliberately offset by light hearted and incongruous elements - a straight faced and unimpressed family dog bears witness to a couple struggling to communicate during a game of charades, for example.
Sometimes, more surreal narrative elements are employed, that are not immediately obvious. These draw the viewer in close to the image, as they emerge faintly inside an interior like an apparition. Such elements could simultaneously depict a memory inside a space, or symbolise aspects of a relationship such as the inevitability of conflict. My narrative approaches are bolstered by my approach to the material - washing away and then rebuilding areas of the painting, so that parts are left ghostlike and ephemeral. Compositionally, the spaces are just slightly askew, and play with lighting and shadows, adding to the mysterious sense of the uncanny."
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