Harriet Gillet
Lives and works in London
Gillett‘s work originates from sketches made during her free time spent with friends. All these atmospheres are subsequently frozen in her paintings. Working predominantly with oil and spray paint, she overlays thin veils of suggestive pink brushstrokes on a warm and fluorescent background reminiscent of the typical gold of religious icon paintings. This allows her works to position themselves between past and present, traditional and contemporary, both in terms of imagery and materiality. Creating a sensory universe akin to magical realism, her painting operates as a metaphor for both instability and potential transformation, thus generating a powerful fluidity of form and blurring the boundary between abstract and figurative, between lived and imagined experiences.
Furthermore, Gillett often draws inspiration from literature or song lyrics, incorporating this additional information in the titles or on the sides of the paintings, thus suggesting further layers of meaning in the works themselves. Ultimately, her paintings become dreamlike explorations and, at the same time, lyrical expressions both of memory and of shifting perspectives. They move between intimate snapshots that evoke personal sensations and enlarged sketchbook pages that, in turn, assume a cinematic quality, firmly universal in their essence.
Exhibitions
