Alison Chapman-Andrews
The Brighton Storeroom 2021
List of works with notes by the artist
For further information and a price list please contact the gallery at:
brightonstoreroom@gmail.com
Big Gully Pond
A black and white photograph taken from a car window of an overgrown gully was cut and glued into my sketchbook, becoming the starting point of all the work in this show. My pictures are collections of simple geometric shapes mostly triangles, and the landscape of sky, water, trees. Sometimes I refer to the shape and sometimes to what it represents.
So please forgive the mix of terms that follow:
List of paintings in exhibition:
1. Big Gully Pond 1 2018
48 x 36” acrylic on canvas
The first painting of what became a triptych, choosing the favourite parts from two small sketches. Pattern predominates, colour is bright like in the sketch Gully Pond 1. New are the orange and pink drops (falling blossom) on the blue of the water.
2. Big Gully Pond 2 2018
48 x 36” acrylic on canvas
A very loosely painted version, based on the sketch Gully Pond 2. Branches are single brush marks. The area of pond at left, is all green and turquoise, while the pronounced zigzag of the bank has gone. The orange of blossom is sparse.
3. Big Gully Pond 3 2018-20
48 x 36” acrylic on canvas
The centre tree has disappeared leaving a space and two thin trees, now scratched in red brown - branches growing from them have red highlights. There is more colour seen here than the previous versions. It even has a pink cloud.
Viewers found the green triangle unreadable so it is opened and pierced. Its long arms are extended into the border trees. The apex problem was solved here by reversing one purple triangle on the trunk/border, thus slightly changing the direction of pattern on it.
On the water surface the shadow of the branches is square. Hoping this could explain the three-dimensionality of the big green triangle.
4. Pink Pyramids 2021
48” x 36 “ acrylic on canvas
The triangles have taken over so, despite its starting point being Submerged Reflections (with Pyramids), at one level still related to the gully and pond at Layne Bridge near Sugar Hill Village: it becomes an exploration of the symbolism of the triangle in its open female form pivoting on the top of a pyramid (top) and the male form piercing the space of the border. The painting takes the title Pink Pyramids when hung horizontally with the brown pyramids at base.
5. Gully Pond 1 2018
16 x 12” acrylic on canvas
The tree trunks in the gully are dappled in shadows of triangular shapes that become the start of the tree patterning. The vine with leaves just appeared - perhaps I saw one that day. The triangular shape is then used repeatedly, throughout the painting.
6. Gully Pond 2 2018
16” X 12” acrylic on canvas
A straightening of the picture plane, less pattern, more concern with “real” space.
7. Sketch for Big Gully Pond 3 2018
12 x 12” acrylic on canvas
As “Big Gully Pond no 3” was repainted only parts of this image still exists in the large version.
8. Central Light 2018
16 x 12” acrylic on canvas
A monochrome sketch for the large Big Gully Pond 3.
9. Submerged Reflections (with Pyramids) 2020
12 x 12” acrylic on canvas
A second drive past the gully, revealed another aspect of the pond, its surface dappled in tree shadows and dark, partially submerged branches. This is now the big triangle. The painting is the result of “playing” with triangles. One result were the three pyramids that suddenly appeared there.
Made to look like the pyramids of Gaza by including a little moon.
10. Submerged Reflections 2 2020
10” x 14” acrylic on linen canvas
Sketch for Pink Pyramids. And should be hung with orientation to match the direction of Pink Pyramids
11. Pink Reflections on Water 2021
12 x 12” acrylic on canvas
The colour of the pink cloud in the water, part of Big Gully Pond 3, becomes a little design on its own.
The Brighton Storeroom copyright 2021