Portrait of Angela A'court

About

I am an artist and printmaker who works predominantly in soft pastel, whether painting, printing, collaging or paper making.
Originally from London, New York has been home for the last thirteen years, with a recent break of eighteen months spent in Tokyo.
My evolution has been influenced by living in and experiencing different cultures, which have offered up a visual and emotional dimension to the work. As an onlooker, I have observed in each the routines and customs that provide a structure for day to day interactions and our need for connection. I am interested in re-defining soft pastel as a modern medium for reflecting contemporary life by distilling and exalting its intrinsic immediacy and tactile distinctiveness.

Statement

I move slowly in the studio, so that ideas can free-float. There is a rhythm and pace here that enables me to feel my way around a painting. With a sensibility rather than an single idea, I'll begin painting so that randomness and equilibrium work along side each other. My working process is an explorative, intuitive mix borrowed from several disciplines, combining and alternating pastel with print or collage.

My information comes from careful observation, from reflecting on a familiar scene and drawing a narrative from it. The scenes are not staged but usually stumbled upon, perhaps a friend's window sill, kitchen table or a glimpse of two people engaged in conversation. It is the overlooked aspects of everyday life that draw me in, a stolen glance of another's day to day and the rhythm of routine that we all share.

My experience in Japan is evident in my more recent work. Prompted by curiosity and a need to adapt to a different culture, I tentatively explore the surrounding new, in contrast with older recollections. I place a beloved cup next to a chicken wire lantern, unearthed at a Japanese flea market, and a new conversation begins. It's about absorbing change and finding a way through, using the spaces in between. The resolution comes in recognizing when a balance is found and there is a connection between the contrary: the new and old, the unfamiliar and familiar.

I gather my visual language from the grace of everyday ordinariness, private worlds, unguarded moments, the unsaid - the trace of human presence. I paint what makes me curious and seek to render the truest emotional response that made me first stop and take note.