Linda Bell was invited to write an Introduction to ‘Enchanted’, Katy Brown’s solo exhibition of new abstract paintings presented by the Russell Gallery in Putney, London. This exhibition runs from 29th May – 21st June 2025.
Are you ready for Katy’s immersive paintings to transport you to a magical realm?
Read on!
FAR, FAR AWAY . . .
Where a winding river meets the turbulent tides of a vast Ocean lies the Earldom of Mount Edgcumbe. Above secluded beaches and smugglers’ coves formal gardens of yew and rose intersperse mystical oak and camellia forests. Verdant terrace lawns sweep down from the pink-hued ancestral Tudor home to the waters’ edge. Open skies, wind, war and waves have all left their mark upon this ancient kingdom. And it is here, nestled within the parkland of deer and duckponds, alpaca, butterfly, bat and bee reserves that Katy Brown casts her magic on to canvas.
Katy’s influences can be traced back to the varnished grandeur of epically proportioned landscape paintings by Claude Lorrain (1600 – 1682) and Nicolas Poussain (1594 – 1665). Depicted in luminous vistas, ruins of Rome and ancient antiquity allude to classical, formal perfection. Katy revisits such Arcadian portrayals; only instead of expansive landscapes punctuated with doric-pillared follies to shelter frolicking gods – Apollo, Diana, Minerva – we instead perceive the impression of lush meadows, bronze-toned puddles, silent mists and wave-worn pebbles.
In works such as ‘Sacred Trees’ and ‘Where The Nymphs Play’, Katy reimagines the tradition of landscape painting and captures fleeting, ephemeral moments. She elevates and enrobes the contemporary estate of Mount Edgecumbe in the majesty of antiquity.
Meanwhile, ‘Blue Cadence (Ode to Frankenthaler)’ pays tribute to the seminal 1955 painting ‘Mountains and Sea’ by Helen Frankenthaler (1928 – 2011). Katy’s turquoise blue is thin, like a wash of aquamarine watercolour imbuing Frankenthaler’s ‘stain technique’. However, Katy’s handling of colour is more intense, her experiences of coastal living possibly echoed in the work. A wave rushes up, as though a giant swell of paint about to crash within the dimension of the canvas. Even the sparse layering of ‘Promise Of May’ displays echoes of Frankenthaler’s style, whilst Katy’s fresh tones and composition allude to the opening of buds and the breath of new life. A close-up of a plant unfurling, yet an entire landscape proposed within a single brush mark.
Yet how should we interpret
the scale and proportions
of this painterly world?
Katy’s focus into the little details of her surroundings is almost Ruskinian in approach. She delicately renders the twists of overhanging branches in ‘Leafy Boughs (Mount Edgcumbe)’; a dense network of individual brushworks becomes a lively thicket in ‘A Gentle Breeze’ and a lush flower border in ‘Amongst the Starflowers’ all seem akin to John Ruskin’s (1819 – 1900) elaborate Victorian studies of rocks and ferns. Flecks and clouds of ochre in these pieces are inspired by tones of Jersey Granite, geological charms collected from Katy’s birthplace.
Even tufts of grass-like marks make a sort of fairy ring or entrance portal in ‘Amongst the Angels’. Whilst golden shades take on a soft yet subversive, divine disposition, the mineral rich sheen of a miniscule chip of Cornish Amethyst lends its lustrous appeal to the glistening path and pearlescent flower-like forms of ‘The Earl’s Garden’. Katy scrutinises quiet little details easily overlooked in everyday existence. Forms, colours and textures are explored to become the nuclei of new, painterly worlds.
Such delicate details make their presence known, rising up to the surface through iridescent hazes of colour as in ‘Fairy Realm’. It is from these brush marks, the way one colour layers over another in a nuanced fashion that the whole tapestry of each painting is woven. From one incidental mark Katy conjures a whole kingdom with its own identity and rules and physical place in space – an actuality in the fabric of existence.
We crawl through the undergrowth of ‘In The Glen’, a dense grove of layered golden greens, shadows cast with rich umber. We wade through the suggestion of rock pools in ‘Enchanted (Mount Edgcumbe Parklands)’, then criss-cross the impression of sunlit gardens beyond, shifting pale rustic pinks in the distance. We can almost breathe in the vapourish essence of ‘A Gentle Breeze’ and ‘Mercurial Patterns’, streaks of frost and dew reminiscent of damp mountain mists settling upon the craggy slopes of Oriental scrolls.
We venture through shimmering brushstrokes in works such as ‘Earth In Tones’ and ‘Mercurial Sky’ where seemingly endless veils of tonal contrasts radiate softly, as nuanced as a sea-mist sunrise. The activity of ‘inhabiting’ Katy’s paintings enables the inner life of the work to emerge. Unification of sublime grandeur and intense detail gives an identity to each painting. We navigate these hybrid worlds, these Chopin Nocturnes conducted in paint, ripples of sound now a wash of cerulean or carnelian, delicate lullabies on canvas.
Mapping out historic gardens, atmospheric skies, plant-like forms and eldritch coastlines, we too can join Katy in the familiar terrain of her native Jersey and her Cornish home; a shared appeal of place. An appeal of wild beaches, sea-salty air and misty forest glades festooned with swathes of incandescent bluebells.
Even Katy’s studio, the Old Cricket Pavilion of Mount Edgcumbe, becomes an extension of such loci and tiny incidences; flowers lilting on the breeze gathered under a gnarly tree; kelp forests swathed by a fog-bound tide; water eddies gushing out from behind a moss-laden, sun-dried stone. Katy’s work is a portal to such kingdoms of existence and memories of specific moments across the vast plane of the changing of seasons.
These are tangible places. Believable and actual in their painterly physicality – where the feel of the brushy texture of grass, the silk of catkins and the spike of hawthorn and rose are evident; yet seemingly as fragile as a dreamscape in our subconscious.
Katy’s paintings are places where fairies and mermaids could well dwell, where giants may hurl islands for stepping stones and perhaps nymphs can play in the cool, sparking waters of ‘Leafy Banks’.
Yet these apparitions are only ever suggested, just as the legends and folklore alluding to such sightings wander into the otherworldly and the frontiers of the undocumented. Katy’s paintings fill this void: a void which abstraction can sustain.
Just as the stars hung in the night sky are more than mere decorations sparkling in a velvet dome, these are paintings which enthral our imagination. The fluttering of fairies’ wings is perhaps implied, the lair of a frog prince evoked, whilst watery reflections and a symmetrical elipse in ‘Earthen Portal’ may remind us of a mirror –
‘Mirror, Mirror upon the wall. . .’
Katy’s search through layers of paint uncovers the possibility of a mystical awakening and glimpses of folklore. Layers of glazes, smudges of pigment and traces of what has been rubbed away – like the ghostly watermarks on a tide line – invite us into a world that feels strangely familiar and yet oddly new. With her brushes and mediums, the tools of her sorcery, Katy lifts the veil from what is absent in our everyday. She reveals what is and has always been there, beyond the reaches of our quotidian prism.
We enter a secret, even sacred realm.
A realm of the Enchanted.
Could there be a more happily everafter?
Katy Brown‘s solo exhibition ‘Enchanted’ continues at the Russell Gallery until 21st June. All visitors will be made very welcome!
Russell Gallery Address :
12 Lower Richmond Road
Putney
London
SW15 1JP
Telephone : 0208 780 5228
E-mail : ru*********@*ol.com
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