Colour, memory and the restorative pleasure of making are at the heart of a new exhibition by Shaftesbury-based artist Elizabeth Rose this September.
Colour Reclaimed brings together 18 original paintings in which flowers, landscapes, vessels and figures emerge from layers of paint, collage and line, balanced by areas of deliberately unpainted space. The works move between abstraction and recognisable forms, drawing on remembered landscapes and fragments of lived experience.
‘Colour and brushstroke have always been central to the way I see and make work,’ says Elizabeth. ‘I am fascinated by the unpainted areas, the areas of space that allow a painting to breathe.’
Elizabeth studied Fine Art at City & Guilds of London Art School and has continued painting throughout a career spanning art and interiors. Her work is held in the Royal Collection. Working from her Dorset studio, she builds her paintings through layers of paint, collage, line and exposed surface, allowing forms to emerge, disappear and return. Colour Reclaimed marks a more confident and intentional return to her fine-art practice.
Across the 18 works, Elizabeth uses colour to explore what we retain, what can be let go and how memory shifts over time. The botanical forms are allowed to dissolve into line, gesture and space. For this latest body of work, she describes a return to colour, space and the pleasure of making: ‘Ultimately it is an exhibition about reclaiming joy.’
Colour Reclaimed is at Shaftesbury Arts Centre from 16th to 22nd September, free entry.
