Leonie Barton

"Relocating after thirty-six years on the Coast was always going to be an enormous shift and we are incredibly grateful to have found Wattley Hill Studio. Feels like it was waiting for us to arrive", says Leonie Barton of this work.

"The palette is shifting, some shapes more representational, the textures not yet brave. There is a keen desire to go outside and paint ‘en plein air’. I am, for the moment, however, still bound to paint within the studio, from where I am surrounded on every side with an outlook to the forest, and whilst I wrestle with and explore the transition my work is making – from pure abstraction to include subjective natural elements – it is the forest that will be my doorway through to what is to come."

Each work begins with a foundational layer of wax, oil, and pigment, which is subsequently stained to draw out the grain and any distinctive marks created through the wax application. From these traces, loose shapes begin to emerge. These forms are gradually developed through a series of intuitive responses either brought forward or obscured, until a composition resolves itself.