Kay Bainbridge
Kay Bainbridge is a painter who is inspired by and captures moments from nature. From this she invents painted landscapes where questions and statements can coexist. She aims to evoke emotions such a wonderment, melancholy and awkwardness.
She was born in Scunthorpe , North Lincolnshire and is still inspired by the landscape and light that she grew up in. She studied Fine Art at Winchester School of Art and Cambridge School of Art and has exhibited in both group and solo exhibitions. She currently works and lives in East London.
Upcoming shows - Open Studio as part of Pump House Artist Collective at Bow Arts, Norton Quays, Royal Albert Wharf, London E16 2QP
Thursday 14th March 6-9pm
Saturday 16th March 12- 6pm
Solo show 2019 with Daphne Francis Gallery, Birmingham date tbc
Artist’s statement:
“A painting comes into being when ideas and the act of painting coincide’ Ilse D’Hollander (1991)
The subject matter of my work is the process and physicality of oil paint and how it can be explored and presented to express inner and outer worlds. This usually means a meeting on the canvas of visual displays of colour, shape, light and forms with inner emotional experiences and memories. I have devised a formula to try to best facilitate this process and which allows a conversation to materialise.
The formula is not rigid and is used as a kind of DNA or acts as a social structure might, from which the process can push and pull against.
The conversation is about asking questions about the process; changing, adding and taking away, in the hope of achieving some sort of resolution, where all the elements of the process can coexist.
Before the painting is started and the formula is applied, I make observational drawings and studies. This is my source material and is usually something I see that resonates, or a visual event, of which I feel the need to explore further. This inspiration comes from nature, the internet, film or photography. Often the sourcing is also influenced by the changing of the seasons and memory.
The formula consists of a loosely painted grid, an abstract pattern or an old painting. Directly onto this I paint marks taken directly from an observational drawing or study I had made previously. The conversation can then begin about the direction of the painting, the push and pull against the underpainting, the crossing and re-crossing of the border between outer and inner, between actual and symbolic worlds. Sometimes the underpainting is barely visible in the final image but always adds to the layering, and within this, clarity emerges, but it is important as this stage to keep the equilibrium and not overwork, as the symbolist Stephane Mallarme describes
“To name an object is to suppress three quarters of the enjoyment of the poem, which derives from the pleasure of step-by-step discovery: suggestion, that is the dream…to evoke an object little by little, so as to bring out a state of the soul or, inversely, to choose an object and bring out of it a state of the soul through a series of unravellings”
Often, there is also a conversation in my work between the natural and the man-made and between the self-contained and the non-contained. I’m particularly intrigued to explore the meeting of all these notions within the space of the canvas and that by asking these questions within the painting, it may lead to bigger political and environmental questions arising from the work.
W
Parasol, oil on canvas, 42 x 48cm (2018)
Roadside Tavern (Moonlight ) , oil on canvas, 40 x 46 cm (2018)
The Need to Coexist, oil on canvas , 40x 46 cm ,(2018)
Bird Swarm , oil on canvas, 40 x 46 cm (2019)
Flatlands, oil on canvas, 46 x 40cm (2019)
The Moon and Two Trees, oil on paper, 30 x 42 cm (2019)