Lot 53 - Vanessa Raw - Let Go of Haunted Dreams

Oil on board
2025
A6 (10x15x2cm)
Original Artwork
Signed on Verso
Curated by Mercedes Lucy

About
In 2022 Vanessa Raw took a radical new direction with her work shifting from traditional portraiture tropes to paint imagined same-sex intimate scenes of women in confected landscapes. Surrounded by flowers and trees sometimes accompanied by fauna to these suspended moments of blissful intense connections show naked energised bodies part-merged with each other and the landscapes they are in.

Using a heighten palette Raw conveys the intensity of the moment as well positioning the paintings in the realm of the imaginary. Likewise the dream-like fluidity of some areas of mark making suggest an altered state of consciousness a deep human connectivity occurring simultaneously on a physical and spiritual plane. Photographs taken on her daily runs through local nature areas an activity undertaken with therapeutical escapist intention are used as source material for her background landscapes binding their confection to meaningful actualities pulling into the paintings the remembered feeling of oneness with nature.

Raw works in a semi-naturalistic style with an intense focus on the textures of the human form. Her large scale paintings are an eclectic variety of tonal compositions vibrant and stimulating. Some of her more explicit pieces show the human body engaged in sexual acts or reaching the point of orgasm whilst others in a more subtle manner showcase the innate sexuality of the feminine form

Solo Exhibitions
2024
This is How the Light Gets In / 2024 Artist-in-Residence / Rubell Museum, Miami, US
On Earth We Weren’t Meant To Stay / Carl Freedman Gallery, Margate, UK

2023
Artist to Artist curated by Tracey Emin / Frieze London, Regent’s Park, UK

2021
Margate Art School, Margate, UK (Residency)
Neon Rooms, Margate, UK

Group Exhibitions
2025
Modèle Vivant/ Jack Sieber Projects, LA, USA

2024
TKE Studios, Margate, UK

2023
TKE Studios, Margate, UK

2022
Small is Beautiful / Flowers Gallery, London, UK
Material Presence / Turps Art School, London, UK
Behind Closed Doors / Berlin Art Week, Berlin, Germany
Winter / Woolff Gallery, London, UK
Adorn the Common, London, UK