Pillow Talk II

Sarah Wall

These shapes are largely painted, but you wouldn't guess it. Resembling the paper cutouts of Matisse more than the markings of a paintbrush, Sarah Wall takes care to remove these abstract, ambient shapes from the conditions of their production. With original and surprising use of colour, Sarah conjures 'landscapes and fragments' on a flat plane with smooth shapes that overlap to create new relations and dynamics. In 'Untitled', deep, arresting blue contrasts with rich tangerine, as curved organic shapes meet confetti-like pink squares. These squares find their echo in the bottom-right corner, as the composition is pulled together by textured grey-green line work which frames the piece, recalling a map or topography. 'No Nutritional Value' seems to play with the suggestion of a landscape, with greens, browns and blue hinting at the simple immediacy of a child's conception. Vibrant pinks pull the composition out of the 'real' or straightforwardly figurative, the large, smooth planes of colour balanced by minute repeating patterns. 'Pillow Talk I' and 'Pillow Talk II' feature rounded shaped that merge and separate, complemented by more linear blocks that provide a kind of stability in the corners of these compositions. Throughout, the colours are creamy and ambient, shapes untethered, seem to drift gently across the canvases.

Richard Waring, Course Leader BA (Hons) Fine Art Degree BA MA SFHEA: 

'Sarah’s paintings show a confidence with scale and the interrelationships of colour, form and gesture, and how these are positioned in pictorial space. Importantly each painting emerges from a direct line of enquiry that forms a coherent body of work.'