Blackburn creates a duality between what might be read as calm, ordered and quiet with what can also be seen as a portrait of the alienation and disillusionment of contemporary existence.
London based artist Christabel Blackburn (1986) is a painter who conjures atmospheric scenes which focus on the interplay between people and spaces. Using a sensitively reduced visual language, Blackburn distils the modern world and our interaction with it into quiet, concentrated scenes. The artist's figures are largely locked in their own universe, traversing streets formed of intersecting flat planes or drinking in art in colour drenched galleries.
Despite the artist's minimalist approach to form, Blackburn handles paint in such a way as to create rhythm and a quiet kind of texture on the surface. By drawing attention to the act of painting, Blackburn reveals the artifice of her creations and emphasises their illusory nature.
Blackburn creates a duality between what might be read as calm, ordered and quiet with what can also be seen as a portrait of the alienation and disillusionment of contemporary existence. Plenty of room is left in every painting for the viewer to navigate these two poles of how we engage with the world.
