Harriet Gifford

The imagery in my paintings and the form of my sculptures inhabit the rich territory between abstraction and figuration.

I am from the first generation of artists for whom the landscape of our visual horizons started with the world changing Apollo mission photographs of the earth from space. I am influenced by Hubble’s beautiful images of emerging nebula and haunting photographs of sub-atomic particles. I am also inspired by the pastel colours of Odilon Redon; the Petri dish colour studies of Ellen Altfest; the skies of Turner and Nolde; and the wet on wet techniques of Frankenthaler and Xingjian.

My paintings are abstractions from the world around me: dark skies; looming presences under a quarter moon; silhouettes of black against darkness; moonlit kipper clouds against the backdrop of the milky-way. Horizons are hinted at if not always present; they are studies in light and colour. My sculptures evoke dry and twisted bone, fossils and slumping flesh. Both give space for the audience to fill in gaps and use memory and imagination to see the whole.

Location: Little Chart
Website: www.harrietgifford.com
Contact: harriet@hgifford.co.uk

Tags: abstract, acrylic, canvas, colourist, contemporary, fluid, ink, little chart, modern, paper, Sculpture, skies, stone carving