DANCING BRUSHES: Group show at One New Change
Abstract paintings often leave one with the impression that they were created in a gestural frenzy; the artist attacking their canvas with brushes. But that’s only one part of the picture. The dynamism between a painter and their work can be likened more to a dance as there’s an undeniable choreography in the final, monumental result. Manuela de la Vega Castro’s soft, watercoloured triptych feel like a lakeside waltz. Movement bursts from the theatrical way in which landscapes emerge from Daisy Fulton’s vivid abstraction. And Mark Wright’s electric colour palette and bold lines feel like a cathartic paroxysm of bodily motion. Let the kinesis of these pieces sweep you off your feet and the next time you’re in a gallery try imagining what kind of dance the artist is having with their work.
Artists
As an artist specialising in watercolour monoprints, Manuela de la Vega Castro is drawn to the unpredictable nature inherent in this technique. It’s a dance between intention and chance, where the materials themselves guide the creation process, often revealing unexpected beauty and depth. This particular technique allows the materials to dictate the outcome honouring their organic fluidity. Rooted in her Spanish heritage, Manuela's practice is informed by introspection, exploring themes of identity, memory, and cultural heritage. She is fascinated with light, materialism, and colour, influenced by the vibrant hues of her homeland, inspiring the making of the work with their sense of warmth and vitality. Through her practice, she engages with the exploration of organic forms and landscapes. Through observation and intuitive mark-making, she seeks to capture the essence of fleeting moments, inviting viewers to delve into their inner landscape.
Daisy Fulton is interested in how paintings take shape. She is guided by intuitive responses gained through continuous material experimentation, engaging with the physicality of paint and the evolving process of making. Linked to personal memories and recollections, Fulton’s work is suggestive of spaces, places and things, where a painterly tension between surface texture, shape, line, tone and motif renders the paintings undefinable yet strangely familiar. Thicker, denser inner sections or subjects contrast with smooth and calm areas across her compositional mappings and structures, generating a blend of unfolding moments, hinting at depth whilst always denying it.
Mark Wright’s nocturnal yet luminous paintings masterfully capture the enigmatic beauty of sublime landscape. Using a cosmic alternation of light and dark, Wright creates such mediated imagery based in part on photographs taken and collected. The pictures feature phosphorus organic and natural imagery converging into what the artist calls “dystopian spaces.” This intersection of representation, experience and process is described elegantly by the artist as “A discursive investigation of the natural world or more specifically landscape as the subject matter is central to my work as an artist. This landscape is not about a specific sense of place but more about the idea of landscape and our relationship we have to it in a post digital world.”
