4 minute read
Drawn to abstraction
Amanda Edgcombe and Tassie Russell are both abstract painters whose work draws on the architectural, urban and rural influences that surround us. This June they are combining their talents at an exciting new exhibition, so I take a sneak preview at what they have been up to over lockdown.
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Amanda and Tassie met life drawing in Suffolk, where they quickly struck up a friendship sparked by their intuitive mark making and similar way of working. Both are very at ease working on a large scale and their pieces share the same sense of being reconstructed from the inside out and playing with our sense of perspective and dimension. The exhibition, which has been carefully curated by Monica Petzal of The Printroom Studio in Sweffling, is a culmination of work produced both prior too, and during lockdown as it was originally planned for spring 2020, and I am interested to see what the last twelve months has meant to them both.
Tassie is based over at Snape, where she lives in charming cottage that started life in the 17th century as a music room. Over the years it has been extended to become a wonderful fusion of flint, brick, glass and timber, with the interior decor effortlessly combining antique sofas and vintage collectibles with streamlined contemporary shapes and surfaces. Tassie is a professional artist who studied at The Slade School of Fine Art in London, and has exhibited widely as a painter, photographer
and printmaker. She takes me out to her studio in the garden, a wonderfully creative space where half-finished canvases line the walls four deep, old tins are jammed with paint brushes and tubes of paint, and her desk is surrounded by photos and small sketches taped to the wall, allowing her to sit and absorb the tone and structure of her next piece.
Tassie’s paintings are bold; strong blues and greys add depth, the asymmetrical blocks of colour giving them a fragile solidity, where dimensions are warped, and your depth of field challenged. There is an architectural beauty to her work, her inspiration coming from looking at ordinary objects, spaces, buildings, and random traces of human activity and expressing how these leave their mark on the environment. “I have always been interested in creating imaginary architectural spaces as subject matter for my paintings and often work on a large scale, laying the canvas on the floor in order to get an aerial perspective and then building the picture up, layer after layer, using mixed media to add texture and form.”
This layering is also be found throughout Amanda’s beautiful abstracts. Using a softer palette of pinks, creams and earthy browns, her work has a great sense of storytelling, with every painting inviting you to invent your own rhetoric. Amanda’s studio overlooks the gardens and newly landscaped grounds of the moated hall she and her husband Chris are currently renovating. It is a beautiful spot and together they are breathing life back into the place, carefully revealing the layers
of time and reinventing the living spaces. “My recent work has been influenced by the constant discovery and reinvention that restoring an old property brings, not just within the house but also out in the barns and on the land, as it is important not to make decisions that will dilute its intrinsic beauty.”
Amanda, who also studied at The Slade, has completed commissions for public funded bodies, architects, corporate and private clients and completed various fine art installations of print work, paintings, and architectural glass. As a multidiscipline artist, she enjoys using a mix of different mediums and textures, and is happy working quickly, often switching between paintings and drawings, allowing the creative process to happen naturally and with spontaneity. “I have become obsessed with imagining aerial views of our property, the circular moat, the geometrical shapes and lines of the surrounding fields and hedges, and the criss-crossing paths scored by hare and deer.” This is reflected in her recent work, whose textured surfaces and gouged lines allow you to imagine outlines of ancient settlements and the footprint of the rural landscape.
Abstract art is fluid in nature, often referencing the unseen spaces and messages woven within the layers, and both Amanda and Tassie are masters at this. Individually their work is relevant and compelling, but with their shared sense of scale and perspective, this joint exhibition is definitely one to visit.
