FROM WITHIN Painting

Like music can take you back to a place and time, I believe colour can take you traveling too. As an Artist, I am interested in the visceral response we can have to colour and the places it can take us. In my paintings, I am searching for something - a connection - my own voice. I have become lost in a sea of other people’s ideas. In wanting to blend in and not be seen, my own identity has become lost, like scattered pieces floating in the wind. The Artworks I make are an attempt to draw those pieces back in - the more fragments I find, the closer I am to becoming whole. I do not wish for this to sound melancholy, in many ways it is the opposite. The process of making art has transformative power. As a child I spent hours colouring-in, I have since learned that colouring-in can relax the fear center of the brain. In my art practice, I am returning to my childhood instincts - I believe if we listen to our inner voices they can guide us in the direction we need to go. The meditative state I reach through making allows me to reach a place where I can shut out the cacophony of noise in our modern world and hear more acutely the guidance I need. Claire Oliver was born in 1981 in Leicestershire and now resides in Leeds. Her tiny paintings which she fondly calls the ‘Little Landscapes’ are often painted entirely from a stream of consciousness. Although undoubtedly influenced by the topography of the UK, her work is often of no place in particular, but rather an annotation of remembered journeys. Small in size but big in colour her marks are unapologetically raw, capturing the essence of space with only a suggestion of form. Claire's 'Leaf Litter' drawings explore her immediate environment. Interested in an ever-changing landscape she sets out to find little moments of beauty on her daily walks. She is drawn to the seemingly random patterns formed by fallen leaves and twigs interspersed with man-made litter and dappled light. Collecting snapshots of the floor beneath her feet she returns to her studio where she continues to explore notions of chance. Using somewhat rudimental and playful marks to capture the lines and colours that have entered her psyche.