I am an abstract expressionist artist living in Oxfordshire, UK. My studies at school led to freelance design work that sold in Japan and the USA. And published in International Textiles. This history resonates in my work today as nuances in mark-making. My current body of work is titled ‘Formfields’, a collection of collages and paintings yet to be fully realised, asking the question, “Is an artwork ever finished?” Through line and drawing in colour, my objective is to answer this question through process.
Predominantly, I explore memory and time through an explorative practice of principles in design. Forms are non-representational reflective of feelings and emotions that interplay with mark marking as complex thematic intervals through the materiality of form and its deconstruction on the surface. Conveyed in these moments of temporality are interpretations of the ‘stoic’ as life experience surfaces with texture and revealing histories. To the viewer, my work offers ‘reflections’ as boundaries and edges that circumvent and resurface as a juxtaposition of joy, freedom, fear, and pain.
Practice embodies all the processes of meaning. Some layers are ‘wow’ moments of beauty, like the design croquis I produced in the nineties. In themselves they provide resonance and activate new marks, a response. And some not so! Recently the aesthetic of line and repetition in pattern appear softened and feminine, ephemeral, and otherworldly.
The beauty of a building and how the materials transcend relate to how I perceive form as a discordant functionality on the exterior. And the monochromatic appeal can be transformed into minimalism and translated as desaturated colour. Artist Agnes Martin said, “states of mind, they were joy, I was inspired by innocence. It is about the landscape of the mind, about escape, about beauty” It is through Agnes Martin's work that I play, explore, and recreate something that is intangible, out of sight and in a ‘utopian’ future.
Southbank Centre, London. 2023. Lisa Jefferies
COLLAGE GRID
Studies inspired by ‘Bauhaus Theory’ and the grid format. Here I am researching key artist Wassily Kandinsky’s theory also as in previous work I intuitively isolated ‘line’ to give it power. Here, the line connects indicating ‘normalisation’.
Linear grid study for painting. Graphite, acrylic and gouache. May 2023 Linear stripe study for painting. Graphite, acrylic and gouache. May 2023
The grid has taken on a new meaning and symbolises peace, calm through the organisation of form, grouping colour and clarifying.
Transition I. Acrylic on cradled panel, Jan. 2023
Transition II, Acrylic on Cradled Panel, Jan. 2023