KAREN STAMPER, LESLEY MCLAREN, SCOTT MACDONALD, RUTH CORBETT

23 April - 27 May 2023

KAREN STAMPER

Born in Yorkshire, Karen Stamper attended art college in Bradford then headed south to far sunnier countries, where she spent the next ten years travelling and working overseas. She is a collector, traveller, observer, an adventurer. During lockdown she worked from the allotments and flowers in her own garden.
She says: 'They were painted in the spring/early summer of the first lockdown. A time when we were all still a little high on being given time off, time to stay at home and time to paint what we wanted to. I know that some artists came to an abrupt stop and couldn't work and some of us at our heads down and we couldn't stop working. Like many I turned my attention to my immediate environment. It was a beautiful hot time and my garden became my inspiration. Although the flowers in these paintings have come from my imagination they started with a lot of mark-making and observation studies from real plants and flowers. The colours seem more intense now, it was such a strangely intense time of limbo and freedom in a restricted space. I am lucky my studio is in my garden, so each day I could alternate between cycling for an hour, making scrubs for the hospital and spending many hours in my studio.'
She is drawn to the worn and weathered: town allotments and old boatyards. To new countries, the colours and the light of the Mediterranean. She says that Life is a collection of experiences; She needs to draw, collect, layer and absorb the places she visit until they are embedded in her artwork and in herself.