"Fables: Works by Anne-Lise Firth"
2001-01-15 until 2001-02-10
Diorama Gallery
London, , UK United Kingdom

Anne-Lise Firth is an abstract expressionist. If you like the works of Klee, Guston, de Kooning and Gorky you will see the influence of them in her first major show in a London Gallery. Her Fables exhibition at the Diorama Gallery is a development of earlier ideas in pastels, sketches and prints expanded large in oil on canvas. Some of these huge paintings have developed from quite small works. The appeal of oil for Anne-Lise lies in its strong and lyrical qualities as a medium. Much of her work is impasto. Scale is important too as she says it implies freedom. Of her work she says, The paintings are about me and how I feel. The true content - human, landscape or animal forms - are transformed into lines and shapes of vibrant colour. The bigger the more beautiful. The original content becomes irrelevant in the context of the final image. She sometimes paints obsessively to achieve this.

The show is called Fables because the paintings are her own improvised stories, which cannot be put into words, but must instead be told large in oil on canvas. Anne-Lise received her BA in History of Art at the University of East Anglia and recently completed her MA in Fine Art at the University of East London. Between these milestones she has spent time as a musician and a nurse. Anne-Lise is painter, composer and narrator. Inventing characters as she goes, they form relationships with each other which resound within the story of the canvas. Intentionally, or not, she paints pictures ultimately to show a release of feelings.

I hope that the work tells me more about myself, but I hope too that the pieces work alone; without, as well as with me.

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