We are delighted to welcome back Edinburgh-based artist, Emily Moore, for her second solo exhibition with the gallery.
Moore’s paintings take inspiration from the natural environment, particularly the mountainous alpine landscapes she has visited. Photography is central to Moore’s practice and the starting point for most of her work. For this exhibition the artist used an amalgamation of images from her photographic archive, spanning a variety of European locations and years.
This new body of work sees Moore experimenting with a variety of materials and mark making. Working directly onto birch panels, Moore constructs her paintings, layer upon layer, an approach that owes a lot to printmaking logic. Hints of those principles can also be seen in her use of halftone dots, created by transforming a selection of her photographs using Photoshop.
Moore’s work often combines elements of abstract and figurative painting, the expressive gestural marks, and minimal geometric forms, interwoven with more recognisable figurative details. The gestures of mark making are distributed through a mixture of hand-drawn elements using charcoal, graphite, and oil sticks, contrasting with the intricate, stencilled layers which are masked and cut out using a scalpel. Moore applies the paint in a combination of transparent washes, and more painterly brush strokes.
Moore’s process entails shuttling back and forth between the analogue and the digital; the loose brushwork and hand-drawn elements contrasting with the intricate stencilled layers and geometric patterns. The paintings that emerge from this exchange reveal a hybrid form. Her compositions merge hard-edge geometry with fluid gesture to create inventive works that explore the possibilities of painting.
