What Artists Like: Christmas Edition
What Artists Like is our artist-led series, shining a fresh light on the New Blood Art collection, through the eyes of our artists. The series features interviews with artists and their curated collections.
Today we see Arlene Sharp’s selection. Arlene is a 2023 Emerging Art Prize nominee who creates semi-abstract, evocative, energetic paintings, infused with the essence of nature and the great outdoors. Verging on abstract, her mixed media works are verdant and luxuriant. They call to mind the sensory experience of looking up into the trees, or out into an endless field.
Arlene is inspired by walks and often paints outdoors enveloped in the atmosphere she seeks to capture. It’s interesting how her selection reflects her own interests and vision as an artist. This small grouping would work well hung together in a collection.
You can read What Artists Like: Christmas Edition in full via the link below.
What Artists Like
Small Infinity XXI by Jan Valik. 31 x 41 cm. Oil on canvas.
“I love the ambiguity in this painting. It is evocative of landscape – some brush marks could allude to clouds or land, but nothing is quite pinned down, there is a sense of coming and going as marks appear and recede. There is a feeling of space – it seems like I am looking through into another world. The thinned layers of paint create a sense of luminosity while the limited palette adds to the sense of otherworldliness.” – Arlene Sharp
Dare I? by Helen Latham. 60 x 60 cm. Oil on wood.
“I am drawn to the looking-up perspective and how the figures of the children are rendered. The brush marks are simply and beautifully executed, providing just enough detail to evoke a realistic sense of children climbing in the dappled light and shade. I particularly like the lowest figure – simply the back of a stripy t-shirt and a foot sticking out the other side of the trunk is all that’s needed to recall the sense of a small child swinging on the branches. The subtle pale greens of the background, without any overt reference to sky, enhances the sense of an inner secret world in which the children are playing.” – Arlene Sharp
Jigsaw by Lindsay Mapes. 60 x 80 cm. Oil on canvas.
“Jigsaw feels lively, exuberant – it’s quite a small painting but packs a big punch! I am enjoying the colour and the composition. The purple jigsaw shapes cover the majority of the painting; however my eye is drawn to the edges to the lively small marks doing their job to encourage my eye to move around the work. The varied mark-making feels robust and energetic, and together with the bright palette makes this painting feel very much present and alive. ” – Arlene Sharp
In Search Of Summer by Arlene Sharp. 51 x 61 cm. Mixed media on canvas board.
A Day For All Seasons by Arlene Sharp. 51 x 61 cm. Original painting in mixed media on canvas board.
Primavera I by Arlene Sharp. 91 x 122 cm. Original painting in mixed media on canvas.
