All posts by Rosie Lesso

A pioneer in early 20th century abstraction, American symbolist painter Agnes Pelton was one of the first to explore art’s transcendental, otherworldly qualities. She found a route into the unseen spiritual world through the light and wonder of nature, painting sparking fireflies, glowing auras or haloes of sunlight that become gateways into another realm beyond…

In the mystical, surreal world of Swedish painter Hilma Af Klint, eccentric shapes loop, twist and turn through space, carrying with them an energised, spiritual wonder. A pioneering painter of the early 20th century, Klint painted her unique brand of abstraction with a full spectrum of colour, but sandy, warm neutrals like MAHOGANY ROSE often…

Of all the places Henri Matisse visited in his long and prolific career, Morocco was the one that had the most lasting, enduring impact, colouring the art he made for the rest of his life. He made two trips to the ancient city of Tangier from 1912 to 1913, both of which profoundly affected him…

KENYA linen’s rich shade of red ochre seems intrinsically bound to nature, invoking rich, fertile soil and the careworn bark of ancient trees. Kenyan contemporary painter Michael Armitage has embraced this earthy colour to convey his homeland of Kenya, illustrating its wild and untameable beauty with an evocative array of ochre and sienna tinged hues….

Henri Matisse adored blue. It cropped up in almost all his paintings, not as pale, distant backgrounds, but as bold, punchy, and in-your-face colours like DEEP ULTRAMARINE Linen. Sometimes he sprinkled the colour like jewels in amongst a sea of reds, other times allowing brilliant shades of blue to entirely dominate the canvas with a…

Russian Symbolist painter Mikhail Vrubel created a magical twilight zone of dwindling daylight hours with grey, purple and blue, capturing the moment when reality blurs into dreams. FOLKSTONE GRAY linen’s subtle violet grey tone was one of his favourite colours, because it allowed him to create subtle areas of mid-toned shadow as the evening quietly…

POPPY SEED Linen’s cold, steel grey often made its way into British painter Roger Hilton’s abstract art, suggesting the dark, muffling clouds of an oncoming storm. Hilton was a leading figure in British postwar abstraction, and a member of the St Ives group alongside Ben Nicholson, Peter Lanyon and Wilhelmina Barnes Graham. Like them, his…

American artist Cy Twombly made the kind of art that celebrates what it is to be an artist, with wild scribbles, streaks and swipes applied with a raw and primal energy. Twombly made his name during the 1950s as a leading member of the second-wave Abstract Expressionist school, alongside Robert Motherwell, Helen Frankenthaler and Robert…

Cold, luminescent shades of silvery grey like PERFECTLY PALE ripple through British painter Paul Nash’s surrealist art, creating the ethereal atmosphere of a dream. Nash was one of a generation of English artists who brought European ideas around Cubism and Surrealism into Britain during the 1930s and 1940s, but Nash interpreted European styles of art…