Angela A'Court PS British, b. 1961

Angela A'Court was in born in London, 1961. After graduating from Goldsmiths' College of Art A'Court worked as an interior designer for an architectural firm before pursuing her career independently. After fifteen years as a designer, A'Court returned to painting full time. Two years later she moved to New York where she continues to live and work today.

 

A'Court takes inspiration from the everyday, whether it's a window sill she walks by or a friends kitchen table her compositions are not staged but observations she reflects upon, drawing up her own narrative from the often overlooked. Working primarily in pastel, her work is an explorative process which aims to challenge the preconceived notions of pastel through innovation in order to define the material as a modern medium for today.

More recent work is about time spent in Japan. Standing in the wings of another culture, I've been considering the essential qualities of balance. Prompted by curiosity and a need to adapt, I tentatively explore the impact of new surroundings, which contrast with my own provenance - a back and forth until both worlds begin to mesh. Like the pulse of a poem, measured lines adjust to take shape. I place a beloved cup next to a newly found chicken wire lantern, unearthed at a Japanese flea market, and a new conversation begins. It's about absorbing change and finding a way through, using the spaces in between. The resolution comes in recognizing when a balance is found and there is a connection between the contrasting new and old, the unfamiliar and familiar.

I gather my visual language from the grace of everyday ordinariness, private worlds, unguarded moments, the unsaid - the trace of human presence. I paint what makes me curious and seek to render the truest emotional response that made me first stop and take note.