Immersed and Imbued
- Tessa Houghton
- Dec 10, 2024
- 2 min read
Updated: Mar 4
8 Women Artists on Abstraction and Expressionism in Britain’s Contemporary Landscapes
Curated by Gina DeCagna
23 Oct- 10 Nov 2024
Private View: Thursday 24 Oct. 6-8pm. Email gallery to RSVP.Artists Talk: Date tbc. Just drop in.Curator’s Tour: There will be weekly teatime curator-led tours on Thursdays and Sundays 3:30–4:30pm.
Participating Artists: Susan Cordes, Tessa Houghton, Felicity Keefe, Joanne Last, Gina Parr, Tania Rutland, Helen Simms, and Tori Tipton.
Featuring painting, printmaking, and photographic techniques, this show puts into dialogue 8 women artists representing different UK landscapes and using a variety of techniques – from semi-abstraction and representation of the outward world, to full abstraction and bold expressionism – to delve into inner and imaginative landscapes.
‘Immersed & Imbued’ explores the ways in which contemporary women artists are responding to a long history and tradition of landscape painting in the UK, using semi-abstraction from representation to full abstraction and bold expressionism. Shifting between engagement with the environment and exterior world to the interiority of the mind, each artist applies distinctive techniques to capturing dynamic places of aesthetic interest, memory, and emotional appeal.
Tessa Houghton’s paintings in this exhibition speak to a synergy between dark and light. With lively bursts of brights against shadows, she carries us into moody, dreamy experiences and a sense of journeying through places that now may be more distant in memory but could be mustered up through the unconscious. Influenced by the broader traditions of romanticism and impressionism, she wishes to stir up emotion and atmosphere in her painting by capturing these ethereal qualities around light. She considers the limitless possibilities of horizons and a liminal interplay between land, water, and sky – prompting quiet introspection and contemplation in the stillness.
The artist explains: ‘My connection to the landscapes in my work is deeply personal, shaped by both the landscapes of my past and the contrasts in my present life. Growing up surrounded by nature and spending time near the canal had a profound impact on me, but ever since then, I’ve lived in cities. This shift from natural spaces to urban environments may explain why I often return to landscape painting as a form of escapism or perhaps nostalgia – a way to reconnect with the places that shaped me during my childhood’.
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