Pause
Acrylic paint, 21 x 29.7 cm

Pause is the first palette knife painting Sophie has ever made. After receiving a beautiful set of palette knives for her birthday she was keen to begin using them to explore the thickness and texture of acrylic paint. 

Sophie was inspired by Paul Cezanne’s palette knife portraits. She is fascinated by the way he created these portraits from thick slabs of paint; colours blending on the canvas with each application and movement. Sophie wanted to explore this process her own way, beginning with an initial drawing, outlining the subject’s features.

Boredom
Acrylic paint, 29.7 x 42 cm

Boredom was created whilst she was interested with the variations in texture palette knives create. She wanted to explore her use of palette knives further by working on a larger scale so she could use my bigger sized knives to work the paint, as she was struggling as a beginner on a small scale. 
Firstly, Sophie created an abstract background with a wash of blue acrylic, letting it drip and dry however it wanted. Here, Sophie wanted to focus on the figure, trying to capture her essence of youth with bright, bold warm colours, whilst also creating a contrast with the cool blue background. Sophie did not want to overcrowd the painting with too much paint for fear of making the colours muddy so she chose to work with lines to illustrate the clothing of the individual.

colours of abstraction series,
each is 90 x 120cm, acrylic and spray paint on mdf board

Alex is a a first year undergraduate student at the university of Cambridge studying architecture. Alex Aliev's work looks at how architectural form and space is broken down and reconstituted into a series of shapes at varying depths. The constructivist and surrealist art movements are big points of inspiration in how he simplifies and arranges features of the built environment around him. He also experiments with colour and texture which provides a framework for this abstract exploration.

Out of Oblivion Series,
Photographic prints of digitally altered collages

Ines Rocha is a Portuguese student of fine arts at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge. Her works involve psychology in a way of understanding herself and the human mind. She usually works with video, installation, and mixed media.

These works are based on the colours of Cambridge in spring and summer. Following their previous series, Diaspora Vapor Series I (2020), these studies on canvas and paper were a way for Molly to explore higher saturation of colour during the intense summer months in Cambridge after moving home from the welsh coast.Using pencil, pen, ink and paint Molly aims to create a space the viewer can follow and travel through.Over the winter, she found a way to translate her abstract style into digital artwork.These digital manipulations are the second stage of my process towards completing my first ever installation.

The digital works are based on physical 59 x 59 cm works from her Diaspora Vapor Series II on paper in which she continues to explore her relationship and knowledge of blue and green whilst considering distance and the place of the viewer. By furthering her process in Adobe Fresco, Molly is hoping to continue to create “vapor spaces” created with a variety of  materials and mediums. The next stages for this series to complete the installation will include more layers of digital art and paper, as well as glass.