The Attraction of Opposites | Clare Andrews

This is an exhibition of oil paintings by Clare Andrews which includes recent work as well as some from the last few years.  Andrews almost always works on a series of paintings at the same time; employing a common theme, colours and visual elements which are resolved in ever differing ways until the pictorial possibilities of those images are exhausted.  A series can consist of anything from three to twenty three paintings combining her own intriguing and ambiguous imagery.

The painting method which Clare Andrews employs is completely traditional oil paint on canvas but she is really interested in contrast, in her own visual language.  In her work, she uses the figurative and the abstract, large areas and shapes of flat colour interacting with realistic figurative images and apparently unrelated subject matter.  Each visual metaphor therefore has an equal weight of importance in the finished painting.  The resulting pictures may have some sort of narrative but usually do not.  They are left open-ended for the viewer to complete. 

Clare Andrews was born in Aberdeen and studied at Gray's School Of Art, Aberdeen, Hornsey College of Art, London and A Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Laje, Rio de Janeiro.  She lived for 30 years in Brazil but now lives and works between her studios in Scotland and Brazil.

Image caption:  Deo Artio Series, Big Red Star Advances, Blue Dot retreats

Virtual tour of the exhibition

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