“As the content of my work has become more personal and inward looking the process of painting has become more urgent, allowing for the world of the picture to have space to expand and develop as I make it."
(Eleanor May Watson, 2022)
A solo exhibition of new paintings by British contemporary artist, Eleanor May Watson, Vibrant Life, at Benjamin Parsons x Hannah Payne gallery on Oxford’s North Parade Avenue, from 5th October – 29th October 2022.
Vibrant Life includes a series of brand-new paintings presented for the first time at Meakin + Parsons in Oxford. Beginning with found images from still life, art history, and opulent stately interiors, unassuming scenes are made sublime through the artists’ delicate and intuitive touch. Whilst referencing the genre of still life, Watson’s paintings hover somewhere between realism and abstraction, investigating interior spaces with suggested absences that are laden with narrative possibility.
The title of the exhibition encapsulates a kind of intensity of lived experience that relates to the artists energetic use of colour and gestural marks; There is a fecundity or ripeness to the works which reflect a significant period of time for the artist.
“As the content of my work has become more personal and inward looking the process of painting has become more urgent, allowing for the world of the picture to have space to expand and develop as I make it.
It is important for me to move between medium and scales, I think it is to do with invention and reinvention. The world of a small painting relates to but works entirely differently to that of a large piece. Watercolour pushed me to explore chance; oil paint enables me to experience colour and gesture more vividly.” (Eleanor May Watson, 2022)
Eleanor May Watson (b. 1990) graduated with a Masters in Fine Art, at City & Guilds of London Art School in 2019, following a year at The Royal Drawing School, and after gaining a First Class BA (Hons) in Fine Art Painting at Wimbledon College of Art. Working primarily in oil paint, watercolour, and monotype printmaking, the artist now lives and works in Kent. Her recent paintings capture moments of light passing across objects within intimate scenes of domestic interiors.
