Meet 2 new artists: Elizabeth Groth and Jessica Chapman

Elizabeth Groth is updating the ancient art (present in most cultures) of working with fibres to meet contemporary concerns. They are also multi-referential – you can note a landscape, abstract geometry, the history of art. The colours are part of their success: bright but rich in tone, their vibrancy creates a focal point for a room. They have an aura, you might say. The objects depicted are sculptural in the sense of isolation from their background: a cactus and its shadow, crockery, a pair of feet, some of the most famous nudes ever painted. All are detached from their familiar contexts to be re-encountered. They look like work you could find in the famous arts towns of Sante Fe, New Mexico and Marfa, Texas. From close up their spatial character fascinates; looked at from a distance it’s the colours that snag the attention. There is something slightly fantastical about them, in a low-key way – or maybe mirage-like, the objects floating in a realm of their own.

Jessica Chapman amplifies the tactile effect of pastel and charcoal in a way perfectly suited to these images’ interiority. It’s interesting how she uses the textures of the materials to give an eroded effect. In their anatomic acuity and aqueous emotional environment they recall the vivid insight of Egon Schiele. In ‘Form’ we get that spliced dual experience of looking at a body and feeling to be one, experiences which tend to merge with as well as to contrast each other. The figure in this work is suggestive of a silhouette, a marionette… In ‘Veiled’, is it a head of hair that trails across the surface of the work, or is it an atmosphere? The black locks expand into the pure materiality of charcoal. The small scale of these works contribute to their enclosed visuals: the women unravel in solitude’s universe. They are unclothed, and one returns to the hair as adornment and identity, the elucidating focal point of the images.

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon in Color by Elizabeth Groth