Mixed media paintings by S.Downham-Lotto incorporating discarded, collaboratively-created work by workshop participants.
(N.B. This viewing format makes it difficult to appreciate scale of each piece which varies considerably.)
This series of mixed media paintings – as with all of my work on this site – began as unwanted or discarded material collaboratively-created with workshop participants. The layerered collage technique involves a radical deconstructing and reconstructing process – as much about building up as taking away, and the discoveries made en route. Splicing up, tearing, scoring into, pealing, scratching, painting over, gluing, pressing, rubbing out – the process is visceral and physical.
Each work becomes a kind of palimpsest of my own and others’ past experiences in the act of making a painting. ‘Others’ in this case, denotes workshop participants I facilitated over the years: school refusers, prisoners, adults and carers with mental health challenges, refugees, English language learners, family groups, art students, primary and secondary school children, teacher trainers, community builders ….
These playful explorations in colour and light, texture and decorative forms – in this case the circle motif – end up looking like living organisms, multilayered and colour-saturated. Histories are exposed through traces of layers or others’ ‘lives’ seen beneath the surface.
45cm x 45cm
105cm x 69cm
95cm x 36cm
74cm x 41cm
32cm x 32cm
80cm x 80cm
30cm x 24cm
30cm x 24cm
80cm x 80cm
50cm x 50cm
100cm x 70cm
34cm x 24cm
108cm x 108cm
120cm x 120cm
“Process-led and experimental in approach Sara’s painting is characterised by an upbeat joyousness emitted through colour, bold, abstract forms and repeating pattern.”
Gallery