Return to the Lake

Playing with concepts of 'space' and 'place', Open College of the Arts 2023 graduate and New Blood Emerging Art Prize nominee Arlene Sharp's canvases explore familiarity and abstraction through bold use of colour and natural forms. Intrigued by our relationship with nature and natural landscapes, Arlene's work reflects an experience of space that goes beyond the plane of physical reality to encompass experience, memory and perception. By translating thoughts and experiences into visual form, these semi- abstract works ask how the process of painting can help us to truly notice a space, and inhabit it in a more meaningful way.

Working in charcoal, chalk, inks and acrylic, Arlene's practice includes memory paint sketches and site-specific projects which involve burying canvases in a landscape for periods of time, as well as displaying paintings in woodlands to create collaborative works which engage the landscape as medium and participant. Layering colours, textures and perspectives, these pieces call to mind the sensory blur of recollection, images reflected in bodies of water and light falling through foliage to create a feeling of situateness and place. Grounded in, as Arlene writes, 'the truth as I see it', Arlene's works encourages us to consider that the 'truth' of a place is, and how our own experiences and perceptions contribute to its formation.

Emma Drye, Programme Leader for Painting (Open college of the Arts - Open University):

'Arlene's painting and site specific installation formed an impressive submission, beautifully contextualised with deeply informed research into the significant contexts within which she is operating. She shows a truly innovative approach to the painted object, pictorial space and the siting of paintings. All these things have been done with ambitious and tireless creativity and application. Her relationship with a small copse of trees and pond that formed the basis of her field research enabled her to build on her formal innovations to create an evocative and inspiring final degree show.'