This Rare Earth
Highlighting the sublime beauty of the earth, and how its timeless strength co-exists with transient fragility, Valerie Grove and Kate Gritton join forces to show their work at the Red Door Gallery in Rye. Their exhibition honours the abstract visions found in the textures, forms and colours of this rare earth.
Kate studied Fine Art at London Guildhall, lived in Western France for many years and moved to Sussex seven years ago. Her landscape paintings and prints contain hidden narratives and histories of the land beyond its visible features. She uses plaster, sand or collaged materials to create texture giving her surfaces their own ‘history’ before receiving paint. She sometimes uses a Chine Colle technique in her printmaking which gives an effect of looking back through time.
Valerie is a self-taught artist who recently returned to her home county of East Sussex after many years living in Japan, the Middle East and London. Her diverse body of environmentally themed work includes painting, collage, print and installation. Recent painting explores the textures, contrasts and ideas that emerge from using leaves, bark and other natural fibres and pigments with a simplified colour palette.