Kathryn Stevens & Veronica Wells

About

Recent graduates Kathryn Stevens and Veronica Wells will show a new series of paintings at Sarah Wiseman Gallery. Kathryn Stevens, a graduate of Bath School of a Art and Design, lives and works in Cornwall. She creates work that is dramatic in scale and colour; explorations of texture and mark-making and the very act of application of paint to the canvas. ‘The way the paint sits on the canvas has an undistinguishable, unique and subtle quality, and questions the process and history to how the marks and colours were created. The physical and ‘performance' nature of the act of painting is critical to my practice,' she explains. ‘The paintings I make are constructions based on impulsive and improvised processes of colour and form, working with the language of abstraction.' Large sweeps of intense inky colours contrast with sharper, glossier pools of paint, playing with the viewer's perception of the painting surface. Veronica Wells (illustrated below) draws much of her influences from popular culture, examining images that portray an idealised way of life. Material possessions, image, style or relationships - the work is designed to entice the viewer into its world. Mixing rough and broad brushstrokes with finer, more intricate details, Veronica's work questions ideas of perfection. She enjoys allowing the paint a reign of its own, with drips flowing down many paintings. 'The effect of the paint lends an unrefined touch to the glamour portrayed and gives a feel of the momentary, like a Polaroid hung up to view a passing snapshot in time, ' she explains. Veronica Wells is a graduate of the Winchester College of Art (2009) and continues to exhibit her work nationally.