Seven Painters — ArcadeCardiff
Cardiff, 2015
Cardiff, 2015
‘Seven Painters’, curated by Brendan Lancaster, opened at ArcadeCardiff on 30 October 2015. The exhibition brought together seven painters who have each exhibited widely in the UK and internationally, showing together for the first time.
For me, this exhibition felt like a conversation across practices. Although some of us had overlapping connections, this was the first time the work had been placed in direct relation — colour against colour, gesture beside gesture, surface beside surface.
The works in the exhibition emerged from very different starting points: fragments of overheard conversation, hurried drawings, geometric pattern, details from Cézanne, the transformation of an abandoned painting. What united them was not style, but a shared commitment to allowing painting to remain open — responsive, provisional, alive.
My own contribution developed through process and adjustment. Forms shifted, were reworked, painted over, pushed further. The surface became a site of negotiation — where experience is translated, erased, and reimagined. An arm might become a curve. A remembered place becomes vibration. Paint thickens into form, and then dissolves again.
As Erin Lawlor describes:
“If all goes well, the painting talks back; in the final instance, that is probably what remains so endless, and endlessly fascinating.”
That sense of painting “talking back” felt central to the exhibition — a shared belief that the work finds its own logic over time.
The exhibition ran until 14 November 2015.
