Jessica Douglas: Grace Wright, ‘Twisted Logic’
I want to make visible something that isn’t tangible: A fleeting moment, a feeling, the click in your mind when everything makes sense… I’m trying to visualise a kind of connectivity to the pulsating rhythms of nature, cycles, seasons… – Grace Wright
Grace Wright is a quiet master of perception. While most of us simply let life pass by, not taking in the details around us, Wright consumes the small musings of the everyday. Traffic rolls past, babies cry, dogs bark, commuters stifle yawns, construction workers drill. Wright witnesses all that is pulsating around her and she finds the being and the essence in each small moment. She then takes this and applies it to her canvases. The result, as you will find in Twisted Logic, is mesmerising.
Her large canvases are powerful and bold and all-consuming. Take any work and as you make your way closer to its surface, you’ll find yourself getting lost in all its ebbs and flows. Tracing the drips and coils – where ribbons of paint and colour delicately weave their way across the surface – it’s easy to lose track of time. Small patterns slowly emerge, and colour themes start to reveal themselves; in particular, the purples and pinks take on a mystical, other worldly effect. However, though the works are dreamlike and full of lively spirit, Wright’s handling of the paint is purposeful and controlled. Within each cloudy, snake-shaped swirl are perfectly-placed lines, drips and flicks of paint, building structure and creating a modelled, three-dimensional effect.
While many works on a two-dimensional picture plane appear flat and rigid and perhaps geometric, Wright’s release movement. It is through her clever build-up of a sculptured picture space that movement can play out. Furthermore, the movement is voluptuous, fulsome and fleshy. It is sensual and alive, fighting its way to the surface and beyond. This pulsing spirit beats across the picture plane, calling you to do the same: to move with the moment and the spirit of the now. This is because there is nothing more powerful than the total connection with the present. Not the past and not the future, but the mystical, tantalising and all-powerful now. Wright’s works are the purest expression of this moment. – Jessica Douglas
