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Softer, Softest

Past exhibition
26 April - 21 May 2024
Open a larger version of the following image in a popup: Laura Footes, Spring Awakening with two entwined trees, 2024

Laura Footes

Spring Awakening with two entwined trees, 2024
Oil on canvas,
120 x 120 cm
47 1/4 x 47 1/4 in
Copyright The Artist
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My practice has many angles but when it comes to interiors. I like to use domestic and familiar spaces to explore the colours of feelings, of human energies (both positive...
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My practice has many angles but when it comes to interiors. I like to use domestic and familiar spaces to explore the colours of feelings, of human energies (both positive and negative), the colours of the soul, of memory and of the climate we inhabit. I build my paintings using a fusion of autobiographical elements, references from world cinema, art history and literature.

In this painting the title "Spring Awakening" comes from the 1906 play by Frank Wedekind which was banned at the time as it centred on adolescent sexual exploration and coming of age.

The content on the painting isn't based on the play but it does reference relationships. I was looking at French Rococo paintings and the female nudes are laid out like fruit to be devoured by the male gaze. I wanted the painting to focus on female pleasure but also be abstracted with marks, lines and transparencies to avoid the explicit and make the figures merge with the cloth and blend the interior with the exterior too. The shadows of trees is important, it shows how nature intrudes on all things and we're all one, just cells in motion in space.

The colour purple means many things to different people, for me I enjoy it's ambiguity - being the colour of both luxury and sensuality and sadness. Colour becomes a leitmotif.
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