Anna Phelps ~ ‘painting from memory and imagination’

Cristus gallery is very pleased to welcome Anna Phelps to its winter exhibition. After two exhibitions of ideas’ paintings, we were looking for work that could complement in terms of technique and richness of palette, and we were also keen to leave the known world and all its troubles. Anna’s ‘Bacchus’, with its dark crimson, purple and golden hues, seemed the perfect painting to build the exhibition around. Like all of her work, it is highly stylised, theatrical and captivating.
The figures are calm and still but distracted, staring beyond the viewer as if frozen in a moment. It is as though they have stepped forward from their reality, to be painted. They comply.

Anna’s statement on her website http://www.annaphelps.co.uk explains how she arrived at such a distinctive style, by rejecting the trends of art teaching and production, in order to find a method of painting that comes naturally from within. The result is personal and spare, but never ‘primitive’, as the attention to detail is truly breathtaking. Come and see for yourself, at the winter exhibition.