We dropped into Douet's studio near Aylsham yesterday for a catch up. Her current body of work builds on previous works based on her travelsthrough the former Yugoslavia. Created from a series of sketches, photographs, objects and chance encounters Douet used these raw materials for a new body of painted sculptures called "The Red Roberts"
The first exhibition was presented at Prostor Gallery in Split, followed by a second at the Embassy of Croatia in London. The Red Roberts is the third chapter. With travel more limited recently, Douet has turned to the things that have already crossed her path: objects found in streets, museums and markets, fragments carrying traces of somewhere else.
Roman and Brutalist architecture, the dreamlike cityscapes of de Chirico and the restless landscapes of Edward Lear hover somewhere behind the work. Colour becomes physical; painted surfaces shift between planes, perspectives and moments in time.
The Red Roberts are not portraits of particular places or things. They emerge through an intuitive process of cutting, sketching, collaging and combining off-cuts with fragments of earlier works. Familiar forms slip out of focus and new ones appear.
Part sculpture, part painting, part imagined artefact, The Red Roberts occupy an uncertain territory between memory and invention — playful, elusive and made in a spirit of joyous unknowing.
To visit Stephanie Douet abd see this new body of work at her studio, near Alysham, North Norfolk, contact her direct on her email: stephanie.douet.studio@gmail.com
About the author
Paul Vater
PAUL VATER
Paul conducts studio visits to maintain strong relationships with artists, designers and craftspeople who show their work with us. He manages the main C&C website and has developed the online shop where selected works are presented for sale.
Paul established his design company, Sugarfree, in 1990 and quickly gained a reputation for delivering fresh, effective marketing campaigns and brand identities for clients including Save the Children Fund, United Nations Association and UNHCR. Over the years those added to the roster include IPC Magazines, Arts Council England, The Roundhouse, Barbican Centre, Arts Marketing Association, Look Ahead Housing and Care, Paddington Waterside, BBC Worldwide, Commonwealth Foundation, Prestel, City of London Corporation, Baker Street Quarter, Victoria BID and the University of East Anglia.