"I am interested in creating images that guide me on a journey so that the paintings are suspended between a tangible reality and discovery of inner worlds. It’s a tension that fascinates me and makes me want to create and paint. The wildness of a landscape provides a structure to express a personal language in paint that has evolved over time. The spontaneous gestures and subliminal images that emerge into my drawings and paintings are a powerful part of my everyday life and connection to Art History. The techniques I use to paint are varied; brushes, pouring, splashing, liquid marks, squeezing the paint directly from the tube, throwing the paint from the air, impasto and drawing with charcoal into paint. What emerges is an organic process that began with seeing how an idea evolves and manifests itself into material form."
Arabella Ross, 2021
Arabella's approach to her work is instinctual, energetic and bold with a love of powerful colour and gesture. A ceramicist as well as painter, a love of India in all its colours – beginning from early in life, has lead her work to resonate deeply with her Indian connection. Arabella's colour palette is imbued with India and the tropics. Experiencing there the ritual of flowers, animals and shrines within a rural way of life in a tropical landscape enriched her understanding of the importance of being connected to a true self where passion, fluidity, energy and openness of spirit is all expressed in the work. "Creative play, imagery and seeking a transformation with materials through a love of colour and form, I explore the tensions within different clays allowing the materials to speak for themselves and to create works of art that resonate with the depth of the human spirit."
Her oil paintings document subconscious impulses through instinctual, energetic forms: some figures, some animal, creating marks through vivid and spontaneous paint application. Her philosophical approach to painting is in the pure painting process, the physical movements and spontaneity required in the act of painting that bring a vision and emotional experience to life.
