Kate Braine | Catherine Leon | Max Naylor | Lex Shute | Eleanor Watson
The Violet Hour invited 5 artists across a range of disciplines to explore the role and symbolism of plants, both wild and cultivated, in artistic tradition and theory. We rooted the show’s title in W.B Yeats’ poem, The Two Trees.
Beloved, gaze in thine own heart
The holy tree is growing there;
From joy the holy branches start,
And all the trembling branches bear.
Remembering all that shaken hair
And how the winged sandals dart,
Thine eyes grow full of tender care:
Beloved, gaze in thine own heart.
From The Two Trees by W.B. Yeats
KATE BRAINE
1985-88 Diploma Course, Sculpture, City and Guilds of London Art School
The artist’s near-religious practice of daily making is in itself a compulsion for growth. Her forms and small sculptures take on various forms inspired by the natural world as well as other influences such as childhood stories and music. Like a growing plant, tendrils emerge, cultivated by the artist’s hand and later curling and settling during the firing process – taking on their own movement and character. What results is a combination of intent and alchemy, a corroboration between maker and material, sometimes in porcelain and Murano glass, others in terracotta and Barley glaze.
CATHERINE LEON
2012- 2015 BA Fine Art, Painting, Wimbledon College of Art
The artist’s extrovert pieces speak a subconscious language of a longing to experience the elemental truths of nature, form and time. Her practice explores the possibilities of an autonomous matter-based language by removing premeditated agency. Using painting as a form of meditation, focus is given only to the mark, and removed from the stream of consciousness. Like a breath or a beat, the mark is repeated over and over; a reflection of the constantly evolving present and itself an act of growth.
MAX NAYLOR
2011-2012 Postgraduate course at Prince’s Drawing School
1998-2001 BA Fine Art Brighton University
Max’s drawings explore the relationship between external and internal spaces through a mixture of imagery made from memory and imagination, creating a natural, unconscious practice of mark making. This creates a glimpse inwards, mirroring that tantalising moment we experience when we drift into sleep, when tangible conscious thought imperceptibly warps and shifts. Ideas somehow take on shape and form as we are delivered to the subconscious inner world - a place strange and unknowable, yet so familiar.
LEX SHUTE
2017-19 MA Painting, Royal College of Art, London
2007 Postgraduate Diploma, Fine Art, Chelsea College of Art
The fluid manipulation of the paint across the canvas and the areas of impasto looks at once blurred and defined, both organic and intentional. Like a morphing, expanding growth of a fungus or lichen, the surface appears to resonate with the energy and movement made from each deft stroke of the artist’s hand. Away from the intensity of the centre, touches are lighter, passageways across the surface like those across a stone, juxtaposed with the tile-like design along one boundary, displaying the artist’s artistic versatility.
ELEANOR WATSON
2018 - 2019 Masters in Fine Art, City and Guilds of London Art School
2015 - 2016 The Drawing Year, The Royal Drawing School
2009 - 2012 Wimbledon College of Art; BA Fine Art Painting (First Class)
2008 - 2009 Chelsea College of Art; Level 4 Foundation Diploma in Art & Design
Through her renderings of still life paintings, the artist simultaneously explores themes of beauty, nature, creativity and mortality within Yeats' poem whilst addressing the patriarchal voyeurism of this art form. Subjects are carefully selected for their symbolism and layers of reference; the inclusion of the artichoke and flower images, painted by female artists Clara Peeters and Rachel Ruysch during the Dutch Golden Age, further subverts this tradition and embraces female creativity.