Emma Cownie, Swansea, Wales, UK
Member Since June 2013
Artist Statement Born in Hereford, educated in Cardiff, I am a self-taught artist who lives in Swansea. I love light and colour. In my art I am drawn to light and shadows and how they shape our emotions. I use oil on linen canvas mainly.
I remember visiting the South of France as a teenager and being mesmerized by the dazzling light, I have been attempting to capture that excitement about light in my paintings ever since. I particularly love the natural world, animals and landscapes. I am also drawn to empty places like churchyards, woods and hills.
When I paint in oils I usually paint the light first and then layer the shadows and mid-tones. I try and make my colours bold and bright but as realistic as possible. I aim to make people look at the ordinary and see the extraordinary beauty in it.
I have a website where my artwork can be viewed – www.emmacownie.com and I have a facebook page also www.facebook.com/EmmaCownieArt
I have recently been featured in a two page spread in a section called “Your Gallery” in the South Wales Echo, the main newspaper of Cardiff, the Capital of Wales, UK. I will be exhibiting four paintings in Nick Holley Studio Gallery from start of July for six months and I also have an exhibition of my work from the 23rd July 2013 in ‘Noah’s Yard’ a restaurant/bar in Swansea which specializes in exhibiting new, cutting edge artwork for a two-three week period. I exhibited as part of an "Open Prize" with The Fringe Arts Festival 'Open Prize' in Bath, UK and my work "Chapel of the Boundary" was exhibited in FAB1 on Stall Street throughout the festival 24th May to 9th June. I have also contributed two paintings to Shelter Cymru Art Auction 2013 to be exhibited on the 27th September in Penarth Pavilion, "Perpetual Light" and on the 24th in The Welsh Centre,157-163 , Gray's Inn Road, London, "Flowers against a deep Blue". I also have an upcoming exhibition in The Grand Theatre, Swansea, running from the 21st October - 1st November 2013 and have won a prize in the recent Nature Cymru Art Challenge. I have also been asked to submit two ‘big’ paintings as part of “The Big Picture Show” at the White Lion Street Gallery” in Tenby commencing the 1st November 2013.
Techniques
Use of light - In my paintings the effect of light is often ‘heightened’ and similar to the sophisticated, precise ‘Pixar’ like animated light. I seek to paint the ‘experience’ of light on colour and form. To achieve this requires the heightening of the effect of light otherwise light can often be dampened or subdued by the absorbing colours. I am much more interested in how light invigorates, resonates, generates or dare I say it animates colour and form, rather than simply dressing it, licking or caressing it. This effect is underscored by my use of drawing lines around colours and form, as with the fauvists, and others have suggested this too gives off an animated feel or quality. I also appreciate this observation as I want colour to be the product of being generated, animated by light as if light was the genesis of colour. Thus light creates the colour in a sense rather than colour simply being illuminated by it.
Use of colour - I use a technique I have named 'refractionist' as it is a 'stain glass window' effect of breaking down the light into different colours in the similar way light is 'broken' into separate colours in a spectrum. A spectral effect would also be apt. It is about breaking down the effect of light, usually sunlight, on colour into ‘component’ pieces of colour. First one has to find a suitable photographed image and then this image has to be deconstructed into combined segments of colour and light. The style is also difficult as it is almost as if I am painting a pre-perceptual stage of vision itself. By this I mean, that it is similar to the pre-construction phase that is said to occur when we actually construct perception, as perception is constructed and not an automatic process. So in looking at this painting our brain can bot
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