Statement

 

 

Victoria Coombes was born in Oxford and studied painting in the Irish Republic gaining her Masters in Fine Art at the University of the West Of England. She now lives and works in Bristol and is a studio-based artist at Spike Island.

 

Her work is concerned with process and the  manipulation of materials and surfaces. It is neither figurative, nor representational work, it is more imagined interior landscapes that come about through structured decisions and happenstance. Paint is applied and removed in equal measure in search of an apparitional discovery or rediscovery of images/memories in the stains, shadows and traces of the materials.

 

In Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks he talks about the apparitional properties of old walls stained with smoke, cracked and peeling and how these surfaces often informed his compositions ... the hope is that the viewers gaze is drawn beyond the abstract into a subjective, suggestive realm.