Claire Shakespeare
Degree: Fine Art Painting
University: University of Brighton
Graduation Year: 2022
New Blood Art Commentary
The lightness of the composition, and the gorgeousness of the colours, combined with the roughness of tactile mark-making makes for an interesting combination in Claire’s work. The artist brings clarity to the process: the surprising placement of colour, the unexpected introduction of unconventional materials – such as house paint, enamel, charcoal, or paper – are harmonised whilst leaving an identifiable trail of their history. These elevating paintings instantiate balance through imperfection, a constant ‘starting again’ as the artist renews her approach.
Elusive titles are indicative of happenings and objects, physical spaces of the land and the body. They have the wide catchment of good abstract art, being both evocative and capacious. As in Lee Krasner’s work – the pre-eminent abstract expressionist of the 20th century – the impressive dynamism they show is tempered by a lightness of touch, tinged with humour. They recall Krasner’s collaged works, and also her later cycles of large-scale abstractions, where you can almost see the diminutive painter laying down the brushwork across the spacious canvas. So you the viewer can’t help but get involved in her process. Claire Shakespeare’s aesthetic quests are also large-scale, but well suitable to a living space.
Artist Statement
Driven by impulse and material process, this introspective work captures personal yet ambiguous engagements with the everyday. Through investigating improvisation and chance within painting, works effortlessly blend materiality, image, and the inner self to create enigmatic compositions that hold a lively balance between colour, form, and expressive linear marks. Resulting works are often suggestive and comical, acting as innuendoes to the body or natural landscape. Set vertical, works embody a personal response to the landscape, which relates to the body of the viewer. Working in the studio, stimulation is naturally dependant on material, therefore it is essential to maintain a playful and experimental approach. Thriving off intuition, painting is guided by the act of painting itself. Intentions for paintings are undetermined but always aim to conduct enquiries into the materiality of paint. By adding, obliterating, and reassembling, imagery emerges from a history of various marks, embracing the unknowability and accidental within painting. Once found, repeated methodologies must be disrupted, usually by introducing alternative mediums such as house paint, enamel, charcoal, or paper which offer inventive and intriguing tensions within the surface. Whether that being thick areas of paint against translucent layers or an unexpected dot of blue next to a larger outline, the works achieve an exciting dynamism between opposition, simultaneously emphasising depth while reaffirming the painting's two-dimensionality.
Solo Exhibitions
(2023) Wobbly Knee, Devonshire Collective, Port Eastbourne
(2022) Frontal Dancer, The Fitzrovia Gallery, London
Group Exhibitions
(2022) SELECTS: VOL. 2, London Paint Club, London
(2022) Juice Box, Fresh Salad, London
(2022) Conversations in Colour, Pilgrims Contemporary, London
(2022) Accessible Art Show, Black White Gallery, London
(2022) Joint Decisions, Brighton CCA, Brighton
(2022) Dot to dot, Coachwerks, Brighton
(2022) Mother, Phoenix Art Space, Brighton
(2022) Brighton Summer Show, University of Brighton, Brighton
(2022) Shapes & Things II, OPEN Ealing, London
(2022) A Lonely Arts Club, The Tetley, Leeds
(2022) On Certain Days, The Fishing Quarter Gallery, Brighton