All posts by Rosie Lesso

Contemporary artist Peter Doig makes deeply atmospheric paintings that are loaded with hidden narratives. From private houses in amongst the trees to boats carrying strangers to an unknown land, his voyeuristic paintings invite us in to ask questions, but give nothing away. The settings for his cinematic stories are almost always abundant landscapes, where trees,…

Contemporary German painter Tomma Abts makes curiously familiar, yet entirely abstract artworks resembling intricate childhood puzzles, folded origami or tactile scraps of textile laid out on top of one another. Nostalgic faded or retro colour schemes include soft shades of off-white and pale beige like ANGORA, alongside other equally intriguing in-between shades. The quiet, understated…

From dusty mountaintops to well-trodden tracks beaten dry by the sun, soft shades of pink like DESERT SAND crop up time and again in Post-Impressionist Paul Gauguin’s art. He coupled this warm, hazy shade with lush, tropical greens and blues, conveying far flung, idealised and paradisiacal escapes from the grey smoky haze of the increasingly…

The leading 19th century Japanese artist Utagawa Yoshitora has a particular preference for crushed violet and indigo shades like HERON, weaving them into his intricate ukiyo-e woodblock prints in the most creative and inventive ways. Sometimes they are small accents of mysterious shadow peppered across still, tranquil scenes. Other times they fill much of the…

Tourmaline’s frosty shade of pale turquoise became winter skies, icy water and crystalline, snow peaked mountain tops in the hands of Russian-born painter Nicholas Roerich. A spiritual nomad and intrepid explorer, Roerich spent much of his adult life exploring some of the farthest unchartered reaches of the world, most notably the treacherous terrain of the…

Rich, warm browns like COGNAC linen appeared again and again in Swiss artist Paul Klee’s art, colouring it with deep, dark and mysterious qualities. Klee was one of a generation of early 20th century artists who abandoned references to the real world, reaching instead for ways to represent transcendental experiences and unseen spiritual realms. He…

Torn scraps of everyday life, from old bus tickets to old newspaper pages take on a strange and spiritual magic in the hands of the great Dada collagist Kurt Schwitters, who refashioned them into richly textural, densely layered collages. His art merged quotidian existence with a higher realm, proving even the most mundane of objects…

The great Russian 20th century master Wassily Kandinsky pioneered a bold new language of abstraction, one that was firmly rooted in the spiritual world. He saw art as a bridge between the real world and another place beyond the tangible, one that can only be felt through sonic vibrations of colour, pattern and light. As…