About

Since graduating from City and Guilds School of Art, Zoë Hoare continues to paint and exhibit her work.

Images of dry skin and shells, splintered wood, chapped lips and dusty moth wings are all being treated with sugary-like paint. With using the process of stencilling and collaging photographs she has been ‘cutting into and dissecting pieces of bark’, releasing their metaphorical sap from inside. A balance of harmony and disharmony within the paintwork has been worked upon to create a feeling of glassy anatomy. Fragile lines contain more solid sections and with collage making in mind Zoë has been instinctively layering and pulling marks together.

Bark takes on a new sense of bodily entropic and colour starts seeping out and appears to solidify like molten lava. Yet much lighter and more transparent, like boiled sweets stuck to their wrapper. It almost flutters and hovers in the breeze just above the layer beneath. The shapes are caught in a membrane between the viewer and the layer that is beneath, like impermanent sunspots in your eyes. 

Zoë aims to make an awareness of the non-visible body within the work, ‘peeling’ off the surface in a sense, and making the non-tangible tangible. It is being recognized in tree bark as it has a hard outer exterior for inner turbulence, growth and movement. It offers a gesture to take it back to the body and is the removal of the surface layer to a more visceral surface.

Trying to consider each mark as an object in itself, the paint becomes more sparing from editing out some of the more heavy and overworked elements. More confident consideration went into each mark before it was applied as she tries not to change it or rub it back as the pristine white would be lost and the intensity lessened. By acknowledging the painting’s internal logic there is a stronger developing conversation between the painting and painter, and the painting developed a weaker conversation with its source. The painting therefore succeeds the source and becomes a splinted-off memory from the original.

All are fragile and brittle. They seem to have the possibility to shatter if you get too near. Yet are gem-like and consist of vibrant transparent colours that bounce off the bright white canvas towards the viewer, throwing them into the treacherous space between the canvas and us.

Exhibitions

2015  - Zoë Hoare and Alex Hollinshead at Brixton               East, 26th May

2015  - 'From the Studio Floor' - Anise Gallery                       Bermondsey 

2014 – Zoë Hoare at Muse Gallery – 269                               Portobello Road

2014 – Artonomy Exhibition, Belgrave Music Hall,                     Leeds

2014 - Keep Hush presents 'Hidden' - 6 Hyde Park              Gardens

2014 – City and Guilds Summer Exhibition – 124                   Kennington Park Road

2013 – Zoë Hoare at Lisa’s – 305 Portobello Road

2013 – ‘In the Making’ – The Rag Factory, 16-18                   Heneage Street

2012  -  +44 Exhibition – City and Guilds of Art                      School London