As part of our ongoing series of Brief Encounter exhibitions, we are pleased to present a collection of new paintings by Cornelia O’Donovan.
Cornelia is a London-based artist whose work draws deeply on pre-Modern sensibilities. Her paintings have the feel of old tapestries, and explore the idea of a country house & garden as a kind of visual narrative. They are studded with rustic rough cut motifs, depicting period-dressed families alongside the fantastic animals that inhabit their storytelling world. Cornelia often takes snippets from some long buried local myth as a starting point for her paintings, and uses them as the gateway into her gardens, laying the paint in a loose, almost expressionistic way. As she weaves these different threads together, Cornelia creates works that feel of a tale retold over generations – meandering, non-linear, and full of fanciful exaggerations.
Weave presents a collection of Cornelia’s current works. These have an autumnal colour palette, and a great sense of visual vibrancy. They also capture something deeper of the era which they look to reference – a different way of understanding both the land and how we imagine it, in a time when a hatchet was more commonplace than a handset.
