Charlotte Verity - CV 28, 2020
It is always a real pleasure to discover a new artist whose work inspires and pleases you. One such artist whose work I came across lately is Charlotte Verity, in this exhibition of delicate, sensitively rendered studies of the plethora of flora found in her garden and displayed in Room 2 at Karsten Schubert London. The gallery can be found in the heart of Soho upstairs in a beautifully untouched Grade II listed heritage building in a row of c.1719 former terraced houses on Lexington Street. This is the second exhibition of Verity's works. The first earlier this year showcased her larger paintings, the works exhibited here though are all intimately small in scale but left a powerful impression on me. They are all monoprints executed in painterly smudges, revealing some nuanced surface textures, and certain pieces have been enhanced with the application of muted washes of watercolour. These works are very sparse in that the artist has been very economical in her mark-making, saying just enough with her imagery and giving an almost Oriental aesthetic redolent of those wonderful Ukiyo-e woodblock prints of Hiroshige, Hokusai et al. The monotype printmaking technique is such a lovely process and being one of the most accessible it is a method that I used to introduce my former students to the discipline of printmaking. Monotypes afford a wide range of mark-making techniques, and the finished outcomes are dependent on the pressure applied and lightness/heaviness of touch one chooses to employ in the print process. Verity could be said to be working in the still-life tradition of other British female artists. I saw links in Verity's work to those of female still life painters and printmakers such as Winifred Nicholson and more recently Angie Lewin. There are subtle differences however, as Verity's prints seem to be observed 'en plein air' whilst out in her garden, whilst those of Nicholson and Lewin are observed from an arranged construct in the studio. There appears to be a more natural or spontaneous feel to Verity's monotypes though as they lack the meticulous contrivance and fuss of the carefully composed pictures of the other two mentioned artists, and appear to aim for a more considered simplicity. Like myself and some other creatives the restrictions of the pandemic proved to be a particularly prolific period too for Verity. All the works exhibited here were completed in the isolation of last year's lockdown and were chosen from more than 100 monotypes that she created which depict a range of flora appropriate to whichever season that they grew in her garden. Verity's garden must have provided her with a place of refuge and healing, a haven and balm from the anxieties of the pandemic. These artworks were quietly and confidently executed by Verity during the confinement when the world slowed down, and we were afforded the time and space to consider our art and the world anew.
