Claire Campbell
LondonA loose band of colour drifts across a field of soft, buttery yellow, like a thought you can’t quite catch. Crimson, orange and blush pink gather in layered marks, and flashes of cobalt blue carry your eye along the line. Below it the colour softens and runs downward, as if the moment is slowly dissolving.
This is the title piece of my Open Studios show. I painted it by following the colour rather than a plan, and only understood it afterwards. To me it’s about the in-between: not lost, not quite there yet, and trusting the next step anyway.
The warm palette brings light into a room, and at this size it can hold a wall on its own.
Oil on linen · 60 × 90 cm · unframed
Artistic background
Claire Campbell is an artist based in North London, working in oils and oil pastels, known for a luminous, emotionally-led use of colour.Her paintings move between abstraction and the figurative, but colour is the constant - layered, atmospheric, and used to hold a feeling rather than describe a scene. Working intuitively and without much planning, she paints the space between what is seen and what is felt: a mood, a memory, the particular warmth of the people and places that shape a life.
Colour has run through Claire's working life for years - she spends her days as a Hair and Makeup Artist in Film and Television, where she has developed an instinct for tone, light and the way a single shade can say something before words arrive. That sensitivity carries directly into her paintings.
Each work is an original, one of a kind. Claire paints from her North London studio, and shares the process behind the work through her studio letter, A Working Practice.
Quote
"I paint to be with a feeling - the space between what's seen and what's felt." - MeInterests
Colour above all - most importantly the feeling it holds. I'm drawn to nature and to people: the warmth they carry, the memories they leave, the quiet emotional states that live in between. My work moves between abstraction and portraiture, but it always begins with colour and the wish to be with a feeling rather than explain it.Accepts Commissions?
Yes
