During winter, Zoe’s usual studio – situated in an Orchard – becomes rather uninhabitable. To continue her painting over the winter months Zoe temporarily relocated her practice to old Design and Technology classroom at Frensham, where she is Artist-in-Residence.
Here Zoe traded the whitewashed tongue-in-groove floor boards, windows framed with creeping ivy and view of clouds-dappled hills of her Orchard studio… for an institutional, modernist, light filled heated space, ten times the size!
“I realised I had underestimated the effect the character, space and size of my studio obviously had on my work. I started painting in monochromatic colours, graphic imagery. Unlike my Orchard Road studio, where ABC Classic FM was my only company – I now had the endless possibilities of the internet to listen to. I started listening to audio books whilst I painted and imagery just started to roll into the paintings.”
To create a sequence of paintings that were influenced by her new surroundings, books and film. These influences were diverse, and included ‘The fountainhead’ by Anyn Rand; ‘Chrome Yellow’ by Aldous Huxley; ‘Playtime’ by Jacques Tati; Several Lectures on architecture by Glenn Murcutt; and an article on ‘The era of Dataism’.
“The imagery just fell onto the canvas – a fifties graphic modernist city.
The future is perfect, but humans are not, so therefore the future will thankfully never, be too shiny, too new or too perfect…”
Various narratives can be read into the works, setting the stage for the viewer to imagine and explore their own ideas about the future and modernity.
Here Zoe traded the whitewashed tongue-in-groove floor boards, windows framed with creeping ivy and view of clouds-dappled hills of her Orchard studio… for an institutional, modernist, light filled heated space, ten times the size!
“I realised I had underestimated the effect the character, space and size of my studio obviously had on my work. I started painting in monochromatic colours, graphic imagery. Unlike my Orchard Road studio, where ABC Classic FM was my only company – I now had the endless possibilities of the internet to listen to. I started listening to audio books whilst I painted and imagery just started to roll into the paintings.”
To create a sequence of paintings that were influenced by her new surroundings, books and film. These influences were diverse, and included ‘The fountainhead’ by Anyn Rand; ‘Chrome Yellow’ by Aldous Huxley; ‘Playtime’ by Jacques Tati; Several Lectures on architecture by Glenn Murcutt; and an article on ‘The era of Dataism’.
“The imagery just fell onto the canvas – a fifties graphic modernist city.
The future is perfect, but humans are not, so therefore the future will thankfully never, be too shiny, too new or too perfect…”
Various narratives can be read into the works, setting the stage for the viewer to imagine and explore their own ideas about the future and modernity.
