About Victoria
London born artist Victoria Albuquerque draws in information to make balanced and harmonious influences of life, self and others.
With an early career in architecture it would have been natural for Victoria to express herself with straight line precision but a dissertation during her masters on the influences computers have on creativity she insists on only using her hands. Today, Albuquerque paints and this allows her to explore what is most curious about in life. Her work is a drawing in of information to make peaceful, proportioned paintings about life, herself and others.
Victoria Albuquerque now lives and works in East Sussex.
@victoria_a_r_t
About the work
When I am asked what is my work about, my immediate reply is 'balance'. I am continually drawing information from my own life experiences, to use them to balance and harmonies these observations to create my paintings.
Composition is vital for me to find balance in my work, looking at an everyday object, person or landscape and setting out the constraints of the canvas, encouraging you to draw your eyes across the surface, paying particular attention to what happens at the edges of the work.
Colour is a feeder to the soul and the same subject painted with different colours gives such a different story. I use colour to harmonies what ever subject I am painting. I spend focused time observing, allowing myself to stop long enough to master what colours are reflected and hidden. My most recent work translates the energy of the subject through abstracting, exploring the depth of colours, working with painter Andy Pankhurst, a Slade and Royal Academy teacher, who trained under Euan Uglow, to gain a better understand about colour, proportion and space within a painting.
The Drying Project
I unconsciously started the Drying Project summer 2020. I was exploring what to paint for a new landscape painting and found myself drawn to an outside handmade washing line that I had inherited from my new home.
I painted a blue towel hanging over the neon yellow neon washing line.
Next I painted the whole neon yellow washing line, the washing gave strong ground shadows in the summer sun. I explored what would happen if I showed the shadows with no washing.
This is where I feel the project started. To paint the way I do, it is time consuming and slightly meditative. While I paint I have many thoughts about life, myself and others. While I painted the washing line I wondered how do other people feel about washing? What do they think about drying clothes. Is there a pattern, a ritual, does the invention of the dryer recharge ours relationship to washing. I felt these were questions that could be explored irrelevant of race, religion, age, cultural, location.
How am I going to get to hear about these stories?
Since then I have asked a neighbour if I could paint their washing line.
I then asked my newsletter readership what washing line stories/photos they had. I have started an archive.
I am working towards a washing line inspired exhibition.
Work exhibited and sold in joint and solo shows; galleries, both public and private, locally and internationally.
Accepted works: ING Discerning Eye, Art Fund museum of the year 2020 Towner Gallery in Eastbourne and a consistent finalist for the Royal Academy Summer exhibition.
Victoria Albuquerque 2020
All portrait photography by Elizabeth Roberts
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