NESSIE STONEBRIDGE – BRITISH BIRDS
2014-04-28Resembling some sort of mid-air collision or interstellar explosions, the energy at the centre of Nessie Stonebridge’s paintings and drawings is centrifugal. Often small in scale, they nevertheless explode beyond their boundaries – their vectors suggestively reaching out beyond their pictorial edges into the gallery space. Stonebridge’s latest series of works draws inspiration from the bucolic, if wild and wind-battered Norfolk coastline, where she now has her studio. Previously rooted in London, Stonebridge’s palette has begun to soften to include murky and Romantic sea greens and stormy blues, although vivid moments of urbane post-punk pink and night-crawler black remain.
At the heart of each of these new images is a fury of beaks, encircled by fanlike, semi-abstracted wings. The result is an aviary of attack and defence, intimating the basic fight-or-flight behaviour of even the most diminutive of birds. Beyond their avian references, these images are impressive for their counterpoising of formal elements. The gestural brilliance of Stonebridge’s mark-making – her paint is scored and splattered with a palette knife, brush or by hand – is contained within a deliberate and considered structural vortex. We could go further and say that for all their allusions to natural and animal forces, Stonebridge’s paintings are fundamentally abstract. They re-route the energy of the external world into a painterly lexicon of sharp, curved edges and electric reds and yellows.
Opposite – Outside In My Comfort Zone, 2014
Exhibition runs through to May 31st, 2014
CARSLAW St* Lukes
137 Whitecross Street
St* Lukes
London
EC1Y 8JL
