Being Colour

About

Ken artspace is pleased to announce an exhibition of works by Rosemary Phelps, whose painted wooden reliefs, monochrome canvases and works on paper reveal an expressive and joyful feeling for colour. Rosemary Phelps (1943- 2022) was an artist and educator. Her individual visual language of colours and shapes emerged directly from things she saw or from the memory of them. Never having had any conventional art training, Rosemary learnt through doing, watching and listening; her artistic language was formed by her experience of the world - by looking and recording images and atmospheres in a diaristic form.

She loved being in open country landscapes, absorbing things that would enter her visual vocabulary. Her use of bold blocks of colour and enclosed shapes might well be informed by the green of a pasture, a field of yellow rape, a strip of blue flax and by the boundaries of a dry-stone wall or a pile of rounded boulders – perhaps even the brightly coloured clothing worn by walkers crossing distant paths.

Rosemary made work in groups or series and exhibited them with titles that were place names, a particular date, or a description of their colour. For many years she was an innovative and inspirational teacher in Hackney Primary Schools and a passionate supporter of the Whitechapel Gallery’s Artists in Schools programme throughout the1980s and later of Camden Arts Centres work with schools. She had numerous exhibitions throughout her career but, as a strong advocate for the value of art in the community, always sought to show her work in social and community settings such as libraries, schools and hospitals.