Philippa Blair: Out of Line

An exhibition of recent paintings by Philippa Blair.

Philippa Blair has had a long and extensive career, garnering international success and has become renowned in New Zealand as one of our foremost abstract painters. Based in America since 1995, and currently working from her studio in San Pedro on the edge of LA, Philippa Blair continues to exhibit regularly in New Zealand.

In her latest exhibition, ‘Out of Line’, at the Warwick Henderson Gallery, she makes a welcome return New Zealand. Known as an action painter, the process of mark-making is important in her work. She often lays the canvas on the ground and works around it, similarly to Jackson Pollock. Like Pollock she explores the painting process and mark making itself with her trademark, vibrant, brightly coloured works with drips, splatters and painted lines. Her work is a personal interpretation inspired by her surroundings and urban culture with its conflicting, overwhelming influences on the senses.

Her latest show is a departure from her previous work, as Philippa states the work is a ‘dramatic and more monochromatic series’. She uses more white over-painting to create negative space in the work while black becomes more dominant. Marks are more thinly layered and scrapped back with less dripping and pouring paint directly over the canvas.

This series also incorporates spray paint, a new element in her work, perhaps evoking a dialogue on more contemporary street culture. There are still grid-like references to the urban environment and birds eye view landscapes, again Philippa is reflecting her experience of urban culture and landscape, taking a multitude of influences from music, industrial architecture, cinema, memories and visual sensation. In some of the work, interesting cartoon-like objects appear, there is a slippage between what is real and what is remembered. Gestures and shapes in her work evoke real objects that again slip into the abstract.

Event listed by Anne Gifford

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