Clare Woods: What Difference does it Make

Woods composes her paintings on aluminum, and the smooth surface, along with a considerable amount of planning and masking tape, allows her to control the work and apply precise brushstrokes. Her source material consists of photographs that she reinterprets, especially through the color palette. The starting point is typically black-and-white photos found in books, magazines, on the web or captured herself. This approach is profoundly personal; when she comes across a captivating image, it is employed intuitively and oftentimes inexplicably, with her only realizing the cause of the emotional resonance at a later stage.

All of the paintings in the exhibition have been created during lockdown. These extensive periods of confinement gradually intensify the otherwise trivial experience of being at home. And during a time like that, with hour after hour spent indoors, one becomes unmistakably aware of the things that we’re chosen to surround ourselves with. The mundane objects that make up our own environment, the elements that furnish each of our own makeshift isolation cells. Characteristics, patterns, and features emerge that only boredom can make us notice. Landscapes appear in the tablecloth, a melancholic incidence of light shines through the old window, the decorative flowers have been limited to a relatively short life in the vase, removed from their natural habitat. Displaced to the house, slowing withering away. Domesticated, they sigh calmly without fighting back.

Kilde: Martin Asbæk Gallery