About the Artist
Deborah Cox was born and brought up in Gloucestershire.
She went to Art School in London in the 1990s and has recently finished an MA in Fine Art.
She worked for many years in printmaking and exhibited at The Royal West of England Academy and Bath Society of Artists, as well as Spike Island and The Ginger Gallery in Bristol.
She has since concentrated more on painting and draws much of her energy and enthusiasm from the Gloucestershire landscape.
‘The landscape tells- or rather is- a story. It enfolds the lives and times of predecessors, who over the generations, have moved around in it and played their part in its formation.To perceive the landscape is therefore to carry out an act of remembrance, and remembering is not so much a matter of calling up an internal image stored in the mind as of engaging perpetually with the environment .’– Tim Ingold
Landscape,memory,past.
While at art school in London I went to a bell foundry in Whitechapel and was exhilarated by the smell, sounds and shapes to be found there..Later, when I moved to Bristol I became inspired by the docks, the architecture and its history.
I have always responded to place.Early on as a printmaker I joined the newly formed Bristol Spike Island Printmakers Cooperative.. I spent many years, using an Intaglio press ,exploring different processes such as linocut,monoprint and etching. They lent themselves very well to pattern and shape found in the urban environment.However, I found myself wanting to push the boundaries of what could be achieved through the printmaking processes and I searched for a more immediate response to the environment.I found that monoprinting which can involve more spontaneous painterly marks when combined with dry point etching added that element of immediacy.
The combination of the more prescribed craft or technique with the more expressive and emotional response to the subject matter became a theme that I engaged with throughout my career.
My response to place changed dramatically when I moved back to Gloucestershire, a place I had been raised as a child.Unlike the cityscapes of London and Bristol I found myself standing on common land in Selsley or country lanes in Bisley that I had a direct emotional connection to.There was a physicality in this reconnection and painting seemed the most immediate way to express this.
I have found a joy in this reconnection, which I channel into my sketches and paintings often starting by being in situ in the landscape. Most of the paintings on display in this exhibition come from this place in me.
In a similar way to my printmaking I found myself interested in the tension between the calm, logical exploration of techniques and ideas in the studio with the expressive and spontaneous sketches that I’d brought in from the landscape.
It seemed to me that a successful painting needed the emotional spontaneity brought by the artist in response to the landscape but grounded by the consistent practice of craft and technique. I studied landscape artists such as William Turner, Ivon Hitchens, Kyffin Williams and David Tress to understand how other artists work with this juxtaposition.
I have spent many years exploring different materials and processes as a painter in my studio in Slad, Stroud.I have experimented with , water based acrylics,inks,pastels and watercolours, often in different combinations on the same painting.I became interested in the layers that make up the surface of a painting and tried many experiments with different colours and textures. I tried different foundation layers to see in what way they effected the layers on top.Was this different if for instance I used acrylic or ink as the surface layer? Also how did the original colour influence my choices of the colours on top.?Sometimes I would block off areas with tape to later reveal the underneath layer so creating a sense of depth in the painting.
I am interested in how the physical layering in my landscape paintings equates with the historical and evolutionary layers of any given landscape..According to the anthropologist Tim Ingold, my own history, is also part of the landscape. As part of an ongoing enquiry and exploration.I have recently been cutting up and collaging old prints and paintings and incorporating them into my work,. in order to bring the ‘non visible’ of my memories and experiences into the present day.
@deborahcoxgallery
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