Letting The Light In XXIX Painting

Simone Russell is a London based artist who creates atmospheric abstract landscape paintings. She trained at Glasgow School of Art. Alongside her art practice she has established a successful career in fashion and interiors. Simone is influenced by her surroundings and the emotional responses that arise. Themes include light, colour and sound. The inspiration for her most recent work derived from textiles she has collected throughout her life. The starting point for many of these paintings involved her resting the camera directly on to these fabrics. Simone wished to emphasise the importance of touch and contact. The resulting photographs were luminous abstract colour fields. The compositions that emerged evoked landscapes: the Northern Lights, seascapes, reflections in water. In a quest to capture the light in the photographs, she worked with thin skins of spray paint and used diluted oil paint. Experimenting with the opacity of each medium, in order to convey their subtlety and to allow previous surfaces to be seen. Layers are built over days, weeks, months - each one a snapshot in time. Simone’s hope is to create something beautiful from an amalgamation of all that has gone before. No coating is a failure, nothing is imperfect, every mark is a necessary part of the whole. The final artwork is richer because of the echo of what is beneath. Earlier this year she had her first solo exhibition at Willesden Gallery in London.