While all around the world is asleep, a light burns in the London studio of Northern Irish artist Kirsten Glass. This is the hallowed time for Glass, when the distractions of the daytime fade to black, the background noise is quietened to a hush, and she is immersed in her paintings as though in a waking dream. Her work is built up through layers of drawing and painting; in this latest exhibition Persephone, Queen of the Underworld, she uses a compass to create the sacred “flowers of life” pattern, with the repetition of movement inducing an almost trance-like state. “I feed the paintings this ritual geometry and I kind of dream into them until they begin to transform into something I didn’t design,” she says.
With her patterned background in place, pictorial elements introduce themselves, whether it be the bird which recurs through the works, the shadow of her own hand, or in the case of the Visitors series, the silhouettes of visitors to the studio cast by the light of a lamp. The title of the show characterises Glass’s retreat from the everyday into a withdrawn psychic space during the creative process. “They’re very female paintings,” says Glass. “They’re libidinal and female and made between something sexual and something metaphysical. In this way they are love paintings.” Venture beyond the veil with Glass at Cock ‘n’ Bull Gallery, London, until 6 December.
© Kristen Glass
Courtesy, Cock ‘n’ Bull Gallery
