Description

Claire Kennedy

Claire is a Glasgow-based painter and mixed media artist. She works primarily in acrylics and photography, combining them in layered and textured surfaces.

After a career in teaching, she has been painting full time since 2014 and has exhibited in group shows in various galleries throughout Scotland. Her first solo show ‘Layers’ took place throughout the summer of 2018 at the Garden Gallery in Clydebank Museum and Art Gallery. Largely self-taught, she works primarily in acrylics, exploring layered and textured effects, often incorporating an image of black and white photography as a final printed layer.

‘I work with acrylic paints, collage and photography, scratching, scraping and lifting to reveal hidden layers and colours. I am drawn to old things, weathered things, often overlooked things, and the colours and patterns which appear there over time: layers of chipped paint on the side of a skip, a watery bloom of rusting metal around a pump outlet on a Calmac ferry inspiration can strike in the oddest of places! I enjoy exploring the different textures of paint brushmarks, glazings and spatters and pairing this with the starkness of a black and white photographic image. My favourite part of the process isn’t the actual painting, it’s the taking-off of the paint I do this between each layer with various implements including an old credit card, a rag, a screwdriver or an old quill pen. Although I work with a very considered palette, I’m never 100% sure what lies beneath, and it’s this element of surprise which I find most exciting and which drives me to paint the next picture.