Claire Shakespeare
Driven by impulse and material process, this introspective work captures personal yet ambiguous engagements with the everyday through an investigation of improvisation and chance within painting.
Within the show paintings have a directional movement either sprouting up or flowing down. Although ambiguous in appearance paintings hold a heightened sensory representation of space and time through a playful balance between colour, form and expressive linear marks. Here surface tension is essential, whether that being thick areas of paint against translucent layers or an unexpected dot of blue next to a larger outline. The works achieve an exciting dynamism between opposition. However, what guides the paintings is the act of painting itself. Thriving off doubt and intuition, imagery emerges through the process of material inquiry. Unjaded by preconceived concepts or narratives, they exist to question the length and breadth of a reaction to pigment on a surface. Consequently, embracing the unknowability within the act of painting.
While abstract in appearance the works require a connection to the real world which later informs the overall aesthetics of the painting. Within their chaos of expressive mark making, blocking and erasure grounds the compositions to find form. The resulting works are often suggestive and comical, acting like innuendoes to the body or natural landscapes. Here paintings effortlessly blend materiality, image and the inner self to reveal honest reflections of everyday life, giving vitality and agency to the works.
Contact Claire Shakespeare
- claire.shakespeare@outlook.com
- Website
- https://www.claireshakespeare.com
- @claireshakespeare_