archetype – Like It Was Done By A Toddler

Archetypes 5: It’s A Hard Rain Gonna Fall (2019, tempura on canvas)

This brooding addition to the Archetypes series departs from the light-filled watercolour technique of earlier painting, employing layers of intensely coloured tempura on canvas to convey an apocalyptic atmosphere that draws from end of the world scenarios as diverse as Bob Dylan’s metaphor-strewn landscapes and today’s Extinction Rebellion youth climate change protests as well as…

Archetypes 4: Pegasus (2018, watercolour)

The artist returns to her Archetypes series with a high-octane rendition of one of the most represented figures from Greek mythology: Pegasus, the winged stallion born from Medusa’s death and ridden by Bellerophon in his battle against the Chimera. The blurring and indistinct forms give the sense of movement at great speed: winged horse and…

Archetypes 3: Et In Arcadia Ego (2018, tempera)

This plangent piece returns to the mysterious territory between landscape and archetype with a tempera work that draws on the delicate landscape palette of Poussin, the bold, furious brushwork of Jackson Pollock and the famous memento mori hidden in Holbein’s The Ambassadors. Et In Arcadia Ego responds to the theme of a morally ambiguous garden…

Archetypes 2: Titan (2018, watercolour)

This dramatic piece develops the artist’s characteristic ‘impasto’ technique, creating light by working into the surface to render rough areas of paint smooth and lucent, creating areas of a dreamlike violet within the energetic, almost violent textures of clashing and blending purple and gold. The Titans, gigantic children of earth and heaven, rebelled against their…

[VISITING ARTIST] The Mower Against Gardens (2018, acrylic)

This striking work by London-based artist Ariella Wolf was created using a brush formed of natural rosemary leaves. The paper was placed directly on grass in the open air within an urban park, before being strongly worked such that the paper has become heavily textured by the surface underneath. Coupled with the vivid greens and…