Gail de Cordova

 
 

Moments spent in places are absorbed and caught in my memory. Whether this be, for example, the ancient stones or dramatic rocky coastline of Cornwall, or the intense light of southern Spain. I am interested in the details – for example lichen on tree bark and the bigger view mist on a mountain top. However, my pictures are never direct references, rather they are experiences distilled; only emerging when the time is right. I can never predict when this will be. So I embark without predetermining their appearance, making the decisions as I work. The picture has its own flow – like music, it does not imitate its subject but embodies qualities of it.  The surfaces can be light or very dense, full of contrast and ambiguity, playing with illusory space versus surface texture. They relate to the interplay of natural forces. So although abstract, these paintings have their source in nature, in a relationship with place.


Gail de Cordova

2009



‘Gail’s paintings leap directly from and to the unconscious.  The depth of colour echoes the deepest stirrings of our souls, calling up childhood memories, dreams and those epiphanic moments when one is utterly in tune with the world.  One sees more deeply under the skin of the landscape to its essence, its quintessence, and one can overlay one’s own images and memories on to the canvas, making the paintings at once universal and deeply personal.’

Hilary Painter April 2009