Abstract Possibilities - Phyl Thorpe

West Ox Arts’ July exhibition will include an extraordinary body of work by painter-printmaker Phyl Thorpe. She came into the gallery recently to talk through her work.

Although primarily abstract, the colourful and generally large mixed media works provide hints of objects that come and go. Phyl admits she has spent a long time thinking about how the landscape is shaped by man, with imprints that range from the literal – such as chalk horses – to ancient footprints and pathways. Similar processes are reflected in her work. Scraped off layers of paint reveal earlier surfaces, while repeated shapes seem to have a hidden symbolism.  

Phyl acknowleges that people like to identify something familiar. But with a playfulness that plays a large part in her work as an art therapist, she takes the familiar and abstracts it, adding dynamic energy through her experiments with colour and form. Phyl describes her work as becomingly increasingly abstract; so much so that she struggles to give pictures names and does not even suggest which way up they should be hung, leaving that decision to the purchaser – or, in this case, the curator at West Ox Arts!