The Freelands Painting Prize and Emerging Artist Chloe Culley

Each year the submissions have given us a snapshot of the current climate, an overview of trends in undergraduate painting. This year perhaps the biggest shift is in the scale of work being put forward. Following several years in which the ongoing pandemic had a significant impact on the paintings students were making, with many of them more domestic in scale, this year has seen an explosion of larger work.

Henry Ward

Foreword to Freelands Painting Prize 2023 catalogue.

Natural forming space and movements have always been an interest within my work, looking at found structures and their surroundings. I’m curious about natural forming color and color you don’t necessarily see on a day-to-day basis. Color is full of potential and a very curious tool to play with when painting. I enjoy traveling on a motorbike and seeing the natural forms in life, here in the UK and abroad. I have always had a natural pull to the work of Lee Ufan and Agnes Martin. I enjoy works that are larger than human work as they push my painting potential. Artists such as Barnett Newman have been an encouragement to move bigger than humans. I find other monochromatic painters’ work a visual interest to understand how others manipulate the use of one color. A key book in my practice has been “talking painting” by David Ryan which reflects on how other painters paint and why they continue to work with a medium that is considered to be dead. In the book, he visits twelve artists and interviews them and develops an impression of the future of the medium and its potential. I’m interested in energy and how we represent it.

Chloe Culley

In conversation with Isla Phillips-Ewen for Daily Art Magazine, Autumn 2023.

Ideas around deconstructing the space of painting, both physically and conceptually, are at the core of her practice. She pursues this investigation not only through the established model of monochrome abstraction but also through archetypes such as negative space, gesture and compositional structure. Though Chloe works also on a smaller scale, she has moved towards large, towering canvases which allow her to fully embody her personal energy.

Freelands Painting Prize 2023 catalogue.

My work is a representation of energy.  I create a very structured and methodical process of painting. Completing a painting in a single day, in an intense focused session after weeks of planning in smaller studies.

Chloe Culley

In conversation with Isla Phillips-Ewen for Daily Art Magazine, Autumn 2023.

I find natural initiation very useful and important to trust when creating work. I made over fifty small drawings in various shades and used a book filled with various formulas of colours I had created in the past that I saw potential in. Between the book and drawings I came to the conclusion of the red.

Chloe  Culley

In conversation with Isla Phillips-Ewen for Daily Art Magazine, Autumn 2023.

I use oils due to the texture, color possibilities and the long drying time so I can continuously rework the surface across the day. I make my own oil mixture which adds an extra glossy shine to the surface and enhances the drip affect down the surface. I don’t use any drying additives as once I’ve finished the painting I enjoy watching the interaction between the paint on the surface and gravity. Natural breakdowns across the surface start to form and I believe it is a way of the painting using my energy and gravity to destroy itself and create a new visual identity in itself. I leave the painting standing vertically for a few months until the surface is touch dry.

Chloe Culley

In conversation with Isla Phillips-Ewen for Daily Art Magazine, Autumn 2023.

None of the works chosen for the exhibition felt as if it was being played to the galleries or following fashionable tropes, more that imagery and forms had emerged from the back of the eyes and the corners of the mind. It is notable too that each of the artists appears to have elected for paint as the medium that can allow them to invent space, time and other-worldly strangeness…All the works brought together for the Painting Prize exhibition possess verve. They are diverse and wide-ranging, but also have overlaps and forge connections.

Jenni Lomax, ‘Making a painting is so hard …’ , Freelands Painting Prize 2023 catalogue.

Jenni Lomax

Making a painting is so hard …, Freelands Painting Prize 2023 catalogue.