- Sep 3

Lindsay Mapes

Lindsay Mapes is a mixed media painter who exhibits extensively in London as well as shows internationally in New York, Geneva, and Florence. Recent notable exhibitions in London include participation at Bermondsey Project Space, Hypha Studios East, Safehouse 1, Aleph Contemporary. Terrace Gallery, and Thames-Side Gallery. Lindsay has been featured on prominent Saatchi Art collections such as Inside the Studio, Artist of the Day, and New This Week and she has also participated at their venue, The Other Art Fair. Notable recognition includes The SOLO Award and The Marmite Prize for painting.

The paintings are fluxus-inspired machinations in the appreciation of process. Lindsay leaves her mistakes, smudges, and residues on the surface to be an integral part of the art. Often painting on clear fabric, which has the appearance of mylar, or attaching mixed media materials to her canvas such as fabric, these paintings are a testament to her creative endeavors. Lindsay strives not towards perfected compositions but rather an improvised tension full of irregular patterns and geometry combined with loose brush strokes and free forms of linear brushwork.

There remains a tension and schism within the work by the unpredictable and often chaotic nature of the paint and patterns within Lindsay’s paintings. Usually containing bright, neon colors as well as variations of white, these works elicit feelings of joy and mania. Although the paintings may seem they are hastily constructed, upon inspection of a video on Lindsay painting in her studio published on her website, the viewer may see she is not impulsive and rather takes her time in applying the paint. Despite her delicate approach, there remains a sense of movement in the paintings through expressive brushwork and linearity followed by structures of roughly outlined checkerboard patterns unevenly spread across the surface.

Primavera (pictured above) like many of Lindsay's paintings remains quite large at 66 x 55 inches. The massive painting contains aspects of minimalism unlike the remainder of her works. With just a few dark brushstrokes and white circles followed by the transparent showing of the frame of the clear fabric canvas, she gives off a purist approach to form, linearity, and geometry. There probably remains less than a dozen raw brushstrokes followed by the painted circles and an asymmetrical line which runs vertically on the surface. A fascinating work which deeply implicates her intuitive approach to painting.

Lindsay Mapes remains a dynamic painter exploring the nature of paint and surface with a sense of tension and suspense involving the collision between geometry and free form. The vast portions of negative space give off intrinsic contemporary value while her expressive brushwork pays homage to great expressionist masters like Anselm Kiefer. With a knack for fluidity and patterns, Lindsay Mapes brings abstraction to the forefront of relevance in contemporary image-making.