Bio
Imogen is a Fine Art graduate from the Edinburgh College of Art, currently working in her London studio.
Painting stands at the core of her practice, showcasing the soak/stain technique where large swathes of unprimed canvas are stained on the floors before being cropped and stretched. A sense of where the painting was made often remains in the composition, whether it be a foot print or imprinted floorboard.
Other mediums which inform her paintings predominately include cyanotype printing, collage and watercolour. All are symbiotic to each other.
Statement
Painting allows me to explore the depth of the picture plane through fluid layers of diluted paint which soak into the canvas pile. The process of staining on the floor with huge swathes of canvas and buckets of diluted pigment is painting in freeform with no constraints of the size or hard edge of a rectangle canvas. I pour, dribble and gently manipulate the paint onto the canvas letting it flow in any which direction it desires, whilst also curtailing some of its rapidly spreading tendrils with a sponge or my hand. I stand in the canvas with my bare feet during this initial stain. I layer colours over each other and leave patches of bare canvas. Once dry, I take my canvas stretchers out and decide which stained parts I want to appear on the stretched side – what I refer to as a ‘physical cropping’.
Now moving the painting to the wall, I begin with a coloured ground of saturated colour. I then build on top with gesticulate marks or further liquidy veils. I keep working, adjusting and repainting until I am happy with a unified composition of organic and sinuous forms that reflect my initial stain. The composition and forms of my abstract subject matter are informed by the element of chance that comes with staining, as well as more gesticulate shapes reminiscent of the theme or idea behind each individual canvas. For example, how at the moment I am looking at phenomenal weather and weather patterns and extreme climates and these reference the shapes I can control in the composition.
Bringing the floor onto the surface of the canvas through imprinted floorboards is important for me to show where the painting was made: its journey from floor to wall. The hard lines of the boards also bring some order to the composition to parallel the areas of flowing colour. The two folding screens I have made highlight this idea further: bringing the floor stained canvas onto a vertical panel that now stands in space and can shift with the screen’s movements. I love how folding screens can make paintings free standing. I love folding screens.
