PIPPA BLAKE CONNOTATIONS
PIPPA BLAKE
“This exhibition marks the end of a beginning”, says Pippa Blake of her upcoming show at Candida Stevens Gallery. The culmination of five years of exploring the immersive experience of walking in nature, this final installment of over twenty works range from small-scale studies to large diptychs influenced by recent trips to New Zealand and Morocco. With a particular focus on the way the landscape transforms at night, the paintings are suggestive of an in-between state; the moments before a day ends, the beginnings of a dream, the next stage of a journey unknown. They possess a haze that speaks of the fleetingness of life’s experiences and the sense that something intangible remains just beyond reach.
Blake treasures time spent with her daughter walking in the New Zealand bush, a landscape to which she feels a deep-rooted emotional connection. When travel was restricted during the coronavirus lockdown in 2020, this experience was distilled to the virtual experience of accompanying her daughter on video calls and receiving photographs, and sparked a line of artistic enquiry that she has pursued in the years since. Following her most recent visit, the intimacy of this shared experience is expressed in two small studies that show the artist following the silhouette of her daughter, beyond which the path and tree trunks are illuminated by torchlight but the wider view remains enveloped in darkness. In another, larger painting, yellow light glows through the trees and is reflected in a pool of water. The translucent outline of a figure, symbolic of the artist’s daughter, heads into the brightness and leaves the shadows of the forest and of the past behind.
The power of light and dark is endlessly fascinating to Blake, whose eye is drawn to the transience of dappled sunlight in a forest, reflections on the water, the shadows cast by moonlight. She believes this stems from her experience of sailing on the oceans, the constant movement over the water’s flat surface resulting in the most fleeting experiences of light and colour that she has sought to capture in paint ever since. Considering the bursts of saturated colour chosen in this latest body of work and her interest in capturing
the more tropical scenery of North Africa, Blake muses on her past experiences of arriving on exotic islands by boat. One gets the sense that as she paints, memories jump out at her, vibrant for a moment before becoming blurred around the edges, resulting in works that are imbued with a sense of wistfulness and mystery. In Morocco it was the quiet moments in the evening that Blake felt compelled to photograph - floodlight palm trees and empty paths against the darkened sky - a contrast to the brightness and colour-saturated experience of the holiday sun. Hovering between optimism and solitude, they suggest an acceptance of the future tinged with wariness of the unknown.
Capturing something of the artist’s inner experience of life within her paintings is central to Blake’s practice but is, to a large extent, a subconscious act. Searching through hundreds of photographs, snapped hastily on her phone, the artist finds interesting compositions to extract as the starting point for each work. Experimenting with these digital images, she enjoys the ways in which a picture can be transformed by accentuating or suppressing colour and light, until they exude a certain atmosphere she feels compelled to translate in paint. Layers of workings on the canvas contribute movement and energy, broad brush strokes and blocks of colour brought alive by intuitive oil pastel ‘highlights’ on the surface. Describing her process as exhilarating and exhausting in equal measure, it is this journey of mark-making that proves so essential for Blake’s practice, whose atmospheric paintings evoke feelings and memories that extend far beyond the scenes she chooses to depict.
Essay by Isabella Joughin
Eden, 2025 oil on canvas
153 x 183 cm
Arcadia, 2025 oil on canvas
122 x 183 cm
Elysium, 2025 oil on canvas
122 x 183 cm
Arcadia with figure, 2025 oil on canvas
102 x 122 cm
Whakanewha II, 2023
Oil on Canvas
101 x 122 cm
Whakanewha IV, 2023
Oil on Canvas
101 x 122 cm
Night Path: Waiheke, 2025
oil on canvas
80 x 100 cm, 84 x 104 cm framed
Te Wharau Creek, 2025 oil on canvas
63 x 152 cm, 66 x 155 cm framed
Palmier : Morocco 25, 2025
Oil on canvas
63 x 76 cm
Longstock, 2025 oil on canvas
51 x 123 cm, 53 x 125 cm framed
Night figure : Te Toki II, 2025 oil on canvas
30 x 41 cm
Night figure : Te Toki I, 2025 oil on canvas
30 x 41 cm
Night Track I : Rangihoua, 2025
oil on canvas
30 x 41 cm, 35 x 45 cm framed
Night Track II : Rangihoua, 2025 oil on canvas
30 x 41 cm, 35 x 45 cm framed
Night Garden: Onetangi 25, 2025
oil on canvas
30 x 41 cm, 35 x 45 cm framed
Causeway Junction, 2025
oil on board
30 x 41 cm
Okahuiti Moon, 2025 oil on canvas
30 x 41 cm, 35 x 45 cm framed
Basmah I : Morocco, 2025
oil on board
30 x 41 cm
Jardin des Douars V : Morocco, 2025 oil on board
30 x 41 cm
Jardin des Douars IV : Morocco, 2025 oil on board
30 x 41 cm
Night Garden : Waiheke, 2025
oil on canvas
25.5 x 30.5 cm, 29.5 x 35 cm framed
Basmah II : Morocco, 2025 oil on canvas
25 x 30.5 cm, 29.5 x 35 cm framed
Worm Moon Palms : Waiheke, 2025 oil on canvas
25 x 30.5 cm, 29.5 x 35 cm framed
Jardin des Douars I : Morocco, 2025 oil on canvas
25 x 30 cm framed
Jardin des Douars VI : Morocco, 2025 oil on board
23 x 30.5 cm
Channel Drive : CA, 2025
oil on board
23 x 30.5 cm
Jardin des Douars III : Morocco, 2025 oil on board
23 x 30.5 cm
Jardin des Douars II : Morocco 25, 2025 oil on board
20 x 25 cm
EDUCATION
1972-1976 Camberwell School of Art: BA Hons Fine Art Painting (First Class).
2004-2005 West Dean College: Postgraduate Diploma in Visual Art (Distinction)
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2025 Connotations, Candida Stevens Gallery, Chichester
2022 Undercurrents, Candida Stevens Gallery, Chichester and Cromwell Place, London
2020 On the road : Candida Stevens Gallery, Chichester
2017 QUEST : Candida Stevens Fine Art, Chichester
2016 Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me: Pallant House Gallery, Chichester
2015 Utopia: Dystopia, Embassy Tea Gallery, London
2015 Utopia: Dystopia, West Dean College, Sussex
2012 Artis Gallery, Auckland New Zealand
2010 Inside/Out: The work of Pippa Blake. West Dean College
2010 Pippa Blake: Journey. Exhibition supported by Louis Vuitton, Auckland, New Zealand
2008 Voyage. (with photographer Kos) Moncrieff-Bray Gallery, Sussex, UK
2007 The Wyer Gallery, Battersea, London, UK
2006 Works on Water. (with sculptor William Pye) Sussex Barn Gallery, West Sussex, UK
2004 Havant Arts Centre, Hampshire, UK
2002 Lane Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand
2002 Havant Arts Centre, Hampshire, UK
2001 Lane Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand
1997 Deborah Bates Gallery, London, UK
1995 Herringbroom Studio, Sussex, UK
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2022 Sussex Landscape, Chalk, Wood and Water, Pallant House Gallery
2021 One Large: Two Small, Candida Stevens, Chichester, West Sussex
2020 Isolated Observations , Candida Stevens , Chichester , West Sussex
2019 Present Day , Candida Stevens, Chichester, West Sussex
2019 Heimweh , Art Space Portsmouth, Hampshire
2019 Island , Candida Stevens , Chichester, West Sussex
2018 ‘there’s no time like the present ‘ Squash Court, Old Portchester, Hampshire
2017 10 West, Santa Barbara, CA, USA : March 2 – March 28
2017 Artis, Summer Show , Auckland, NZ
2017 GOOD NATURE : Candida Stevens Gallery, Chichester : September
2016 Art on a Postcard : The Hepatitis C Trust, London.
2016 Ellipse : Galerie Remise, Beusselstrasse 2, 10553 Berlin
2016 Ellipse : Angelika Studios. High Wycombe
2016 Oxmarket 40 Years Anniversary Retrospective, Chichester
2014 ‘et la peinture ?’, galerie du jour, Paris, France
2014 20 Painters, Phoenix Gallery, Brighton, UK
2014 Artis Gallery, Auckland New Zealand
2013 Zimmer Stewart, Arundel, West Sussex
2011 Highgate Contemporary, London
2011 Artis, Auckland. NZ
2011 Conversations: Artel: Havant Arts Centre
2010 Stripped Bare: Havant Arts Centre
2009 Chichester Festival
2009 Omega Printmakers, Portsmouth
2008 Havant Museum
2008 Artists from the South: Chichester
2008 Chichester Cathedral 900 Years: Artel
2007 The Ocean Project: ARTEL/NOCS: Bargate Monument Gallery, Southampton
2006 Resurgence; Langstone Gate: Havant Arts Centre
2005 The Flux Project: West Sussex (with Tim Kent)
2004 Artist’s Harbour Historic Portsmouth Dockyard
2003 ‘Odyssey’ Havant Arts Centre
Beatrice Royal ‘Australasian Exhibition’ ‘Works on Paper’ Sydney Arts Fair, Australia
2002 Face-It’, Otter Gallery, West Sussex
You Are Here’ Phoenix Gallery Brighton Director’s Choice, Havant Arts Centre
2001 Beatrice Royal Contemporary Art, Hampshire ‘Coast’, Artsway, Hampshire
2000 Portsmouth Open
Mill Studio Exhibition, Sussex
1999 L’Artichaut Small Paintings Show, Chichester
1998 St Richard’s Hospital ‘Paintings from Poems’, Chichester
1997 Arundel Festival, Sussex
1996 Sussex Open, Brighton
1994 Chichester ‘City of Culture’ Exhibition
1993 Sussex Open, Brighton
1977 New Contemporaries, London
1976 Stowells Trophy, Royal Academy
1975 Portsmouth Open
Pippa Blake was born in Portsmouth, England in 1954, and studied Fine Art (Painting) at Camberwell College of Art, London from 1972 to 1976 gaining BA Honours (First Class). In 2005 she graduated from the Visual Arts Programme, West Dean College, Sussex with a Postgraduate Diploma (Distinction).
Blake has travelled the world extensively but now lives and works on Chichester Harbour near the Hampshire/Sussex border, UK . She exhibits frequently both in the UK and New Zealand. She serves as a founding Trustee for BLAKE an organisation in New Zealand inspiring environmental leadership.
