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Lorraine Molins - 'Beyond The Edge, 2 ' (oil, charcoal on canvas, 65 x 155cm).jpg

Artist:

Lorraine Molins

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Lorraine Molins lives and works in London. She studied at Chelsea School of Art (1971-1975) and at Goldsmiths College, University of London (1975-1976). Her vibrant gestural abstractions informed by the rhythms of jazz music, use bold colour, sweeping form and line to explore the visual, tactile, spatial and auditory sensations that make up human sensory experience. Molins’ practice involves cataloguing her visual responses to colour and line in both the man-made and natural worlds: a painting might begin as a response to a single colour, a tree, the sea, a particular characteristic of the weather; or equally the visual excitement of theatrical lighting, a building, the movement of bodies in crowds or cars on the motorway; responses which are later transferred into paint on canvas.   

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Molins’ interest in the movement of the eye across the canvas has led her to work in sequence, using multiple panels to suggest what she describes as the experience of sitting in front of a large cinema screen or looking through one window into another. Her invented forms advance and recede within the shallow depth of the picture plane where line and space interact, creating a sense of jumping in and out of space. Molins endeavours to capture the specific qualities of a particular space or environment: the movement of the wind, the play of light, sensations of warmth or cold. Gestural arcs are often repeated, motifs which, whilst transcribing the movement of the painter’s body across the canvas, might also suggest human forms, the camber of a tree branch, or the rise and fall of a jazz clarinet.

 

Music is an important informant to these gestures, which invoke the level, pitch, tone and ambience of musical improvisation, an interest Molins shares with artists such as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Henri Matisse, as well as the artists associated with Abstract Expressionism and American colour-field painting. 

 

Lorraine Molins received the Arts Council Award in 1977. Her work has been exhibited widely throughout the UK and internationally. Solo exhibitions include: Finkielman Gallery, Paris (2010); Finkielman Gallery, Paris (2003); McCulloch Gallery, Melbourne, Australia (2006); Gallery 286, Earl's Court, London (2004);  Apartment 195 Gallery, Chelsea, London (2004); Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, London (1989); Ikon Gallery (Arts Council), Birmingham (1982); Air Gallery, London (1980); Battersea Arts Centre, London (1979); Country Cousins, London (1978); Drawings, Kent Arts Festival (1977).

 

Group and solo shows include: Diptychs, Triptychs & all, (solo show), Chichester UK, (2023); What Lies Beneath Oxmarket Contemporary, Chichester UK, (2023); Art Space Open Studios, Portsmouth UK (2023); Affordable Art Fair, Hampstead with NoonPowell Gallery (2019) and (2022); NoonPowell Summer Show, online, (2020); BEAT, Ealing Art, London (2018-2021); Royal Academy Summer Exhibition (2015, shortlisted); Acava Open Studios, Impress House, London (2005-20190;  Clarion Gallery, London (2008); Gallery M, Melbourne, Australia (2006); The Osare Gallery, (solo show), Melbourne, Australia (2006); The Really Useful Theatre Corporate Gallery, Covent Garden, London (2003); Space Studios, Rotherhithe (1980, 1981); Battersea Arts Centre Group Show, London (1978); The London Group, Royal College of Art, London (1978); 55 Wapping Artists, London (1978); Vauxhall Arts Centre, London (1976); Air Gallery, London (1976); Northern Young Contemporaries, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester (1975); and New Contemporaries, Camden Arts Centre, London (1974).

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