Discover Antonia Showering's richly layered, jewel-coloured paintings
Antonia Showering’s practice is concerned with ‘trying to make emotion tangible’. In her Camden studio, the artist creates richly layered, jewel-coloured paintings of figures in dream-like settings. ‘Often these canvases are populated with family members, or people I feel close to,’ says Antonia. ‘People I love or have loved.’
There is something diaphanous and shifting about the figures Antonia paints. She explains that while a character may begin life on the canvas as a friend, in time it might develop into her niece, or her brother. These figures may be drawn from her own life, but they act as universal characters. She hopes the viewer will be able to project their own stories onto the canvas. Recollections and faces are stacked upon one another with thick, bold brushstrokes in an exploration of the nature of memory.
The notion of intimacy is threaded through her work: hands are held; chins rest on shoulders; and people embrace. In this second year of the pandemic, the yearning that underpins these expressions of physical closeness feels especially raw. Just as the people whom Antonia paints are not specific, neither are the landscapes. These are, she explains, ‘an amalgamation of the three different places I’m from – England, Switzerland and China’.
This constant slippage between what is real and what is not imbues the work with a bittersweet quality. The past year has seen Antonia becoming increasingly nocturnal in her painting habits. ‘With everything shut, I gave into my body clock and realised that four or five in the morning is when I produce my best work,’ she says. ‘By the early morning, when I’m delirious, quite special things happen. There’s nothing to remind me of the present – no sound of the radio next door or my phone going off.’ It is perhaps unsurprising that the liminality of dawn makes it the ripest time for the exploration of memory and its mutability.
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Joshua Monaghan1/6Antonia stands in front of Crux, which she painted in 2019.
Joshua Monaghan2/6Antonia has fixed works on paper and photographs of meaningful places and people to the white walls of her studio in north London.
Joshua Monaghan3/6She applies oil paint in bold hues to her canvases.
Joshua Monaghan4/6Her dreamlike landscapes are populated with diaphanous figures, onto which the viewer can project their own narratives.
Joshua Monaghan5/6Antonia in the studio.
Joshua Monaghan6/6A large work from 2016 entitled Dying Breed.
