Lindsay Mapes’ work is busy. Her paintings, informed by the experience of becoming a new parent, are full of life, full of activity. Speaking about her work, Mapes states:
“In a desire to be truthful about the reality of my new life, I have fully embraced the idea of play in relation to my paintings and sculptures. Recent works celebrate the realness, messiness, colour, brightness, boldness, joy, sadness, loneliness and dangers of parenthood”.
At times, we see well-worked surfaces and the layering of paint; questions of the underneath and what it represents come to the fore. Elsewhere, everything is on the table and the viewer can see all, from the semi-transparent fabric stretched over the wooden stretcher bars to the stitched marks and paint on the surface.
It is such back and forth between giving and allowing the viewer to ask questions that makes the work so open and pertinent. The paintings have an honesty and depth to them. They embrace abstraction, harnessing a sense of material invention and placing colour as the focal point of the work to breathe new life into the abstraction tradition. Consequently, Mapes’ works feel fresh and varied, of the moment. They posit a space where abstraction is at the fore of contemporary art practice, of contemporary thinking.
The coming weeks look to be eventful, with big projects on the horizon for Mapes. We are looking forward to sharing the details. For now, have a browse of the current selection of available works.
