Bella Easton is a painter and printmaker whose work explores the architectural spaces that exists close to her. She distills these personal places by fragmenting them into tiny sections to then reconstruct them using a system of geometry and layering. The new spaces negotiate between the real and the unknown, whilst making connection between image and pattern. The work isolates or abandons reality and the relationship between what may have once seemed ordinary and everyday is given a sense of importance and permanence. The real and familiar becomes bizarre, dreamlike and staged. Her landscapes, filtered through "a lattice of dark trees and branches" have been compared to Peter Doig's "connections between image and pattern" by Jackie Wullschlager in the FT.
Her most recent work is constructed around a grid structure which form landscapes which repeat and mirror, having reference to Rorschach. ‘Blind is printed partly in black onto a graphite base and tonally graded into white on white and ‘Rule 174’ is oil on linen, subtly graded from deepest, darkest to lightest shades of blue pigment. In these large works the city’s streets resonate with elusive atmospheric qualities. Mysterious and mundane, grimy and ethereal, the landscapes here are both threatening and beautiful, familiar and uncanny.
'The burnished repetitions enact a complexly fragmented dance between architectural and natural, and between pattern and image - enhanced here by how the reflected branches form heart-shapes which suggest an emotional overlay at odds, perhaps, with the rational order'. Paul Carey-Kent includes 'Geometric Hearts' in his highlights from the year- Artlyst and Saatchi Online, full article can be viewed at www.paulsartworld.blogspot.com
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