by Collectors Contemporary
Location: Coleectors Contemporary
Artist(s): Sarah HARVEY
Date: 3 Apr - 17 May 2014

Over two years in the making, Sarah Harvey has created a new body of work on canvas, featuring large scale and multi-panelled paintings that explore the sensuous and enigmatic qualities of water and light. This exhibition will also debut Harvey's largest work to date, the phenomenal dodecatych "Bali Waters with 3 Girls", which measures an astonishing fifteen metres in length. Harvey is internationally recognised for her paintings of the human figure, predominantly self-portraits, suspended in luscious light-filled azure and aquamarine waters. Over ten years ago the artist discovered a green swimming pool in the Tuscan hills of Italy, an experience that inspired her to explore the sensuous and enigmatic qualities of water and light. Since then Harvey has continued to paint the body submerged and abstracted by liquid landscapes that are uniquely her own, characterised by undulating currents, distorted shadows and refractions of sunlight. Water is a literal and symbolic element in the artist’s work. It is a familiar, yet inscrutable force. Harvey uses the interaction between the body and water to explore the complexities of human emotion and experience. The weightless figures are simultaneously liberated and engulfed, revealed and obscured: suggesting notions of freedom, fear and fantasy.

Harvey arrives at each finished work through a time consuming, labour intensive process that encompasses contemporary digital technology and traditional oil painting. The artist’s highly original technique involves creating a photographic image that she either takes or directs. After which she undertakes a process of collage and digital alteration. She then uses this source imagery to paint with a technical virtuosity honed and developed over a decade. Each painting involves the application of up to thirty layers of paint in order to achieve the vibrancy and translucency that defines her work. Harvey unites the photographic and the painterly in deeply expressionistic oil paintings that combine abstraction and figuration.

Harvey was born in London in 1981. She trained at Chelsea School of Art and Newcastle University. She has received numerous accolades, including First Prize winner of the Ken Howard Award (2007), Grand Prix winner of Art Periscope Award (2007) and winner of the London International Creative Competition (2011). She was also shortlisted for the Celeste Painting Prize (2007), Art Review’s international competition (2009) and Saatchi’s Best of British (2009). Harvey’s painting Cubist Waters was shortlisted for the Saatchi Showdown: Places and Spaces (2012). Sarah Harvey is represented by Collectors Contemporary.

-Collectors Contemporary

Image: © Sarah Harvey