Responses - New Paintings by Ian Carr and Sara Downham-Lotto

Two abstract artists, well known for a bold use of colour and an interest in surface and texture, collaborate on new paintings.
Ian and Sara met in 2010, and immediately recognised similar concerns about painting. Although their interpretations are different, they both give credence to solving the same visual challenges through experimentation with colour,
texture and form. The concept of responding to each other’s work seemed a natural progression.

Colour was an obvious starting point, and Ian’s fondness for cerulean blue was infectious enough for it to find its way into Sara’s work, while her preoccupation with repeating circles broke into his predominantly rectangular compositions. Texture and variety of surface were discusssed and developed: scumbling, scratching, light washes and thickly built up areas. One of the very first observations of both artists’ work might be the suggestion of music and rhythm with their mutual attention to colour, tonal and textural contrast, and the way the composition of shapes and patterns conjures up a pulsating rhythm.

"I have evolved my own unique style of mixed media collages on paper, celebrating and exploring colour and light, texture and decorative abstract forms. At conception - often responding intuitively to music - my pieces are free and organic, embracing the accidental and playful arrangement of contrasting forms and surfaces. "
Sara Downham-Lotto

"My ideas come from varied sources: the sea, the land, a weathered building, patterns in the estuary mud, plants climbing up a trellis, rusting machinery; there are infinite resources and everything has possibilities for exploration. I am interested in layers, peeling them back to discover something afresh. Explorations of colour and surface within a strong framework are a recurring theme."
Ian Carr

Ian studied at Chester School of Art, Leeds College of Art and Manchester University. For most of his working life he has been in art education in schools and colleges in the UK and Zambia, as well as working as a copywriter, gallery director and mural painter. Ian has exhibited widely, including at the Arnolfini Gallery Bristol, the Walker Art Gallery Liverpool, the Whitworth
Art Gallery Manchester, the Roundhouse at Chalk Farm and Leeds City Art Gallery, and he has been active in organising
the Bunker Project, an annual art exhibition held in a decommissioned cold war nuclear bunker in south Devon.

Sara Downham-Lotto has exhibited widely in Britain, Eastern Europe and the USA. She studied Fine Art in London and Manchester, and gained an MPhil in Art History at Glasgow University. She was awarded a British Council/Polish Government Postgraduate Scholarship to paint in Gdansk, Poland, for three years, followed by a spell in Budapest,
while her art lecturing has taken her as far afield as Australia, Chile, Estonia, North America and Russia.

For more information visit http://www.harbourhouse.org.uk/gallery-icarrsdownhamlotto13.html