22 July - 3 August 2008

10am - 5pm

Informal Gallery Talk with Sara Downham Lotto: Friday 25 July at 12noon

Sara Downham Lotto

Caroline Mercer

Sara Downham Lotto's work has been described as reflecting a yearning for rural, open spaces after the experience of the crowded metropolis, with a celebration of colour, form and, above all, the creative process.

Her starting point is almost always spontaneous, with some memory or vision of a particular place at the back of her mind. Working with mixed media collage on paper, she experiments with hand-painted abstract forms and fragments of past paintings. By repeatedly painting over, scratching into, cutting up and reassembling the surface, a number of layers or 'lives' are built up, the traces of which can be seen beneath the surface. Translucent layers of texture and colour replace conventional perspective and pictorial means to produce pure form, sometimes with the addition of recognisable imagery or motifs to ease the transition into the abstract.

Bodies of Sara's work bear a strong relationship to the environment in which they are produced, enabling the viewer to trace a development from the moody, changeable scenes of Scotland and the semi-tropical exuberance of North Carolina, to the hip-hop dynamism of the streets of North London and the rural expanse of Devon.

Sara has exhibited widely in Britain, Eastern Europe and the USA. She studied Fine Art in London and Manchester, and gained an MPhil in Art History at Glasgow University. She was awarded a British Council/Polish Government Postgraduate Scholarship to paint in Gdansk, Poland, for three years, followed by a spell in Budapest. Her art lecturing has taken her as far afield as Australia, Chile, Estonia, North America and Russia. Having travelled extensively, Sara now paints and teaches from her studio in South Devon.

Education is a passion, too, for Caroline Mercer, whose teaching serves not only to inspire and empower her young students, but also to enrich her own creative development. Salcombe itself provides rich inspiration, and much of Caroline's work in recent years has been concerned with the sea - the vessels above and the sealife below.

Her newest work, however, is in response to the study of the female form, and particularly the face, exploring a fascination with adornment, concealment and the concept of the mask. Inspired by her love of ancient pottery and archaeology, these new sculptures celebrate strength and beauty, a direct response to the past by bringing it to a contemporary setting. Modigliani, Picasso and Brancusi are also strong influences.

"I have looked back, to look forward."

In her ceramic work, Caroline enjoys the immediacy of the age-old techniques involved in hand-building vessels, treating the surface with rich decoration and a combination of firing, colouring and glazing.

She also produces lively mixed media drawings, all of her work exploring the contrasts between the old and the new, colour and tone, two dimensions and three.

Caroline has taught and inspired many local primary schoolchildren, has run two successful residencies at Tiverton Arts College, and, notably, worked with Exeter’s Royal Albert Memorial Museum on a special commission which now forms part of their touring collection. She exhibits and sells her work across Devon.

www.sarastudio.net

www.carolinesclay.co.uk

Harbour House 2008 ©