Opening Night Friday October 14th, 6-8pm
Conversations in Colour is a collaboration between two very talented artists Fiona Chandler and Shani Nottingham. The exhibition will be an explosion of colour, both artists working with their favourite mediums and depicting their favourite subjects.
Fiona Chandler
Inspired by the natural world I use watercolour & ink to compose flowers, leaves and plants both in full bloom and various stages of decay. Bursts of colour and strong lines capture the energy of growing things. The pattern and colour encapsulating the joy of creating and painting surrounded by floral life. There is more to our natural world than first meets the eye.
My work looks simple at first, the closer you look there are more elements than first noticed. I'm a watercolour and mixed media artist and like to create a fluidity in the work. Subtle washes, bright colours and fine lines gently move across large pieces of paper & canvas. Flowers settle, drips run. I have a love of colour, nature and line. A passion for ink and the flow of water.
Layers build to bring the artwork to life, to convey an idea, to have a conversation with the viewer. You're encouraged to look a little closer at the world around you. At the artwork in front of you. A new detail each time you pass or take a second look. To collect. To covet. Line, shape, pattern and colour.
To have the opportunity to paint & to have this conversation is thrilling. My works live with people excited by colour & nature.
Shani Nottingham
Water colour to me is beautiful. I love its fluidity, unpredictability, and the glowing colours. As much as i appreciate, respect, admire and swoon over controlled, subtle, more neutral palettes in artworks, I seem to be find it impossible to maintain it in my own work for too long. I am inevitably drawn back to colour, and vivid tones. Watching colours merge, slide, bloom and run, spreading across the paper, soaking in and transforming continues to fascinate me. It is colour and more colour that emerges time and time again.
Apart from water colour itself a inspiration for this exhibition I love to forage flowers found while walking, pick blooms from my garden , with every Season out her in the country giving me a whole new selection of flowers and leaves to choose from. I plonk them in some of the vases I have collected (way too many) and have them all around the house. I take photos of them often, but ironically and weirdly, have never really painted or drawn them. This is going to be a challenge, to observe the shapes, negative spaces, the contrasts, the textures, and see how this plays out in creating art inspired by their beauty. I anticipate wonderful discussions with Fiona, lots of exasperation but also joy…and lots of colour.
