Patricia Grant and Susan Mealing exhibit at Clare Hall

Patricia Grant has created an abstract body of work using limited resources: a reduced palette, her controlled breath, and the randomness of black pigment suspended in a soap bubble. She has snatched a controlled result in the space of a breath, and channelled the gravitational forces of nature into her art. This work surfaces an issue in contemporary culture that fails to see any beauty in the later stages of the cycle of life. Using the narrative of the bubble imprint, she assigns a new aesthetic using this decaying fragile sphere to parallel one inherent but as yet undefined at the late ageing stage.

The value of flawed and disdained is fundamental to Susan Mealing’s philosophy. Her work embraces imperfection and impermanence and the wabi sabi belief that nothing lasts, nothing is finished and nothing is perfect. In ‘Surface’, Susan explores aspects of life which require close scrutiny. Her quiet insistence on the broken undermines the initial familiarity of her subject matter. Her work creates a reconfigured perceptual experience, which gives a unique insight into the space beneath the surface, together with a startling beauty.