Carrie Elston
Exhibition - Expressions in Every Form (2025)
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About Carrie ElstonMy work explores manifestations of individual consciousness through gestural paintings which are saturated compositions of bright color, blunt mark-making, and erasure. Throughout, there is a passage of time implicit in the working of the paint, which is built up and then excavated, revealing buried color and form. The layering implicit in the process of painting is reflective of an emotional excavation, in which memories are built up over time, become calcified, and are later broken down, uncovered, and exposed. The intention is to lay bare an emotional state, or way of being when the layers of artifice are removed. In recent years I came back to painting after a long time away from it, having gone through major personal upheaval in my young family. Facing a very different version of my life than the one I had known, I found that I had to become reacquainted with myself. I had to go beneath my own layers of artifice that had built up over the years in order to really recognize myself, and form my own intention. This excavation of the self is mirrored in my painting process. These paintings have a specificity as well as a universality to them that make them emotionally open. Through a loose, raw, and immediate painting language I am excavating my internal experience, sharing my own intimacies and trying to convey the enormity of it all. Featured Piece Exhibiting at Bank Art Gallery |