Thursday 15 March 2012

Painting 1: Be Found


Oil on canvas, 200x140cm, 2006
The first painting of the series entitled The New Sublime

This was the first painting that I made on this scale since finishing my Fine Art degree in 2001.  On a study trip to Paris I was moved to tears by a huge Rothko and couldn’t drag myself away from it but had no idea why.  I thought, wow, painting has the power to strike something in us that can make us feel alive in a profound way.  For me it was a total awareness of being present in the moment, like a rush.

Something in this really connected with me, which led me to do my MA to understand more about this experience from the philosophical angle.  After going some way to grasp what I understood by the ‘aesthetic experience’ in my dissertation, I found that my painting process was becoming more devoted to reaching this place than being ‘about’ anything.

I wanted to paint canvases that you could drown in!  Loads of colour, space and movement that all speak to each other.  Be Found was a big leap for me and after 6 months of painting it in my living room and being with it night and day, I felt it was finished and that it had opened out the way for me to follow it with another painting of this size.

Be Found was shortlisted for the Brighton Festival Fringe Visual Arts Prize in 2006 and I exhibited the full series the following year at the Friese-Greene House Gallery.  In 2009, when they were being shown at Xuma, an interior designer offered me a very good price to purchase Be Found for one of her clients.  At the time, I was reluctant to separate the series, so I declined.

I feel now that it is more important that the painting is seen and enjoyed by someone, rather than waiting in storage with the others for a time that may or may not come.

3 comments:

  1. Absolutely amazing! Are any of these on eBay yet? If so can you post a link.

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  2. Hello, they aren't on eBay yet as the auctions will be timed to begin with the opening of the exhibition. I will post links to the auctions on here as soon as they begin (within the next month). Thank you for the compliment!

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  3. Lucianna - I've discovered your paintings through a link in Regional Meeting notes, just arived.

    - Sadly I will not be able to get to the exhibition before it closes.

    - You are obviously on an adventure and prepared to take risks. There is a rightness about your attitude to your work which is totally liberating.

    - Although I have not stood before Sublime I find it deeply moving. Like an innocenr flower you fill the world with colour and we stand amazed.

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