Charlotte Fox on painting the area in between ‘desire, repulsion, connection and dream’

“I do unfortunately have to say ‘all over’, as awful as that is,” states Charlotte Fox when asked the concern of where she discovers her motivation. And her reply is possibly more truthful than the majority of. Her sources are spread and originated from staging and colour raised from movies, the pull of voyeurism and story, stacks of classic Playboy publications and– more all of a sudden– the deadpan item photography individuals post when reselling things online.

“There are so many bizarre pictures where they have no intention of creating an image other than to document something for sale, but they are so weird and beautiful, and I find them very intriguing.” Mainly, however, it’s other painters who send her back to the studio with an innovative trigger fired up. “Nothing makes me want to paint more than seeing a great painting. It’s more of awe and excitement that something I’ve never thought of could exist so perfectly and so new.”

Charlotte comes from Brooklyn, where she lives and works, and studied at the Art Institute of Chicago for her BFA. Her studio functions as her home, which she confesses blurs the line in between the 2 in manner ins which aren’t constantly healthy. “I never really leave the space and get to paint any time, which is great but can bleed into the ‘living’ part.” She’s especially drawn to jobs with women-run galleries: “The projects where I’ve been able to work with women and women-owned galleries have been such an amazing experience of support and connection through a real belief in the work. I would love to keep working with more women-run spaces.”

When she’s splitting on with a piece, her procedure tends to begin sluggish– breaking at one painting at a time, investing weeks or longer before she even gets a brush. She will sort through conserved image folders and old publications and collage pieces together in Photoshop up until the referral “feels right”From there she draws an overview and invests the rest of her time on rendering– believing the image through completely before catching it physically. “At the end I will usually change my mind about a few things or decide if it’s working or not and that’s when it gets scary.”

In Quiet Frenzy, which was Charlotte’s centrepiece of a current program entitled Unravel– which happened at 303 Gallery– the piece started with a big spread from a classic Playboy publication. Charlotte misshaped, turned and cropped the print product till a single flattened figure stepped forward out of a haze of green and fluorescent yellow. “I wanted to take an image that was so fleshy and in your face and make a softer, beautiful image,” she states.

Give Up/ Something like Drowning came together in a rather various method. What started as a hectic, vibrant painting of 2 figures quickly wound up being totally painted out and softened till just a loose, washy figure of an older lady stayed, stretched throughout 2 canvases, “floating and not fully there”The one piece Charlotte avoided the initial structure was a roaming porcelain child’s head in the corner. “I loved how perfectly wrong it felt there, like a memory popping in and disturbing the painting.”

When it pertains to analyzing her work, there’s no specific message running as an undercurrent through everything. Rather, she chooses to let individuals establish their own reading. “I like hearing what other people come up with or what they interpret through the paintings, how they piece together glimpses of narrative,” she states. “That being said, I hope they find beauty and a bit of humour, and would maybe like to sit with them for a bit and take more than a moment to connect with some feeling there.”

“Throughout my work, I’ve been interested in exploring desire, repulsion, connection and fantasy. I like to think of my paintings as what’s in between those states and communicate that tension.”