CAROLE EBTINGER

Carole Ebtinger's work rejects ideas of divine inspiration. In the studio, it's Ebtinger and the materials caught in an exchange of feeling-making-making-feeling. The artist responds to the press of pastel in hand and in turn, the press of pastel against paper. The work is built in layers of pigment, ink and pastel as Ebtinger responds to what appears in front of them.

Marks range from brazen to tentative, small licks of ink contrast fervourous pastel. Through the process, the artist starts to covet certain marks, guarding them from new ones, these become gently cradled by the rushing stream of mark-marking. When the works are finished, it’s these marks that appear to glow from within the piece. The works thrum with energy, like they could shift and change at any moment. Like they are shifting and changing, in a state of flux, as a viewer's eyes rove, as we stand back or move closer, so the marks sit differently against one another. Motion flows through the paintings, in an underlying current, like those we find in nature; in the sea, in the wind before a storm, and those we find in the body; the swirling of intense emotion in the gut, the syrupy shift of heartbreak that flows in waves from the chest.

There’s a poetic nature to the work, a reflection of the artist's internal world put to paper, a kind of emotional diary. Some works feel like departures, farewells, reminiscence – heartache; others, a rediscovery, a careful mapping of new feelings and hopeful beginnings. A piece could take a matter of hours, or be mulled over across long periods before Ebtinger feels they are complete, only finished once the artist has settled with them. Working across several works at once, pieces in the same series communicate with each other, different stories written in the same pen.