Lottie Cole | A Commonplace Collection of Paintings

LOTTIE COLE

A Commonplace Collection of Paintings

T. S. Eliot, Burnt Norton, 2024 oil on canvas, 100 × 80 cm

INTRODUCTION

This collection of work builds on the themes of “Home of the Paleoethnobotanist”. Interiors are still the backbone but rather than highlighting underknown women artists and collecting in general, the work in this show took poems as a starting point. Poetry, like art, takes you somewhere else. And I was intrigued by ekphrastic poetry and that there wasn’t a ready term for a painted equivalent.

I have always painted subjects beyond interiors but for this show I’ve looked more to myself and my own life. Underlying it all is an interest in ‘interiority’ whether it’s a desk strewn with papers, looking at someone reading a book or trying to decode what the contents of a room reveal about its inhabitant(s). But the paintings still contain an interest in the symbolism of flowers and other objects which the viewer can choose to engage with if they wish.

For many years I worked at The London Library, and as in so many things, while I worked there I was confronted by my ignorance, surrounded by such clever and interesting people. I’d never even heard of a Commonplace Book back then (it’s a scrapbook of sorts in which people from antiquity to around the 19th century kept notes of things that interested them). They don’t have prescribed subjects that they cover.

Girl Reading II, 2024 oil on canvas, 80 × 70 cm

And when I was trying to explain what this collection of paintings was about they resisted a straight-forward description and so I felt that the reference to the ‘commonplace’ idea gave room to house the different subjects. And that they are okay to be together for the pure and simple reason all the subjects are of interest to me.

I am a daughter, mother & older sister so I know what that feels like in my own limited way, but my daughter has three half-siblings, two brothers and a sister, and it’s been fascinating to see how that works. Painting a subject is a way of exploring and understanding it and so it’s been interesting to spend time considering that aspect of life. I also looked at old formal studio photos of children - they are so stiff but almost always you spot the tiniest gesture of affection - a little finger touching the end of another finger - and I found them moving. One of my favourite pictures is Mary Cassatt’s Little Girl in a Blue Armchair. The pose is so truthful and the opposite of sentimental and I wanted to see if it’s possible to paint children, convey a sense of their complexities, but not in a mawkish way.

I like imagining what it would be like to live somewhere else, to be someone else, to have different tastes and interests. And every painting is a chance to be something different.

Lottie

Cole, 2024

John Masefield, Sea Fever, 2024 oil on canvas, 100 × 80 cm

Paul Verlaine, Moonlight, 2024

oil on canvas, 100 × 120 cm

Derek Walcott, Sea Canes, 2024 oil on canvas, 100 × 80 cm

Girl Reading I, 2024 oil on canvas, 70 × 60 cm

Turkey Oak I, 2024

watercolour and gouache, 36 × 26 cm

Interior with Muse Head, 2024

watercolour and gouache, 36 × 26 cm

Turkey Oak II, 2024

watercolour and gouache, 36 × 26 cm

Interior with Sunset at Sea, 2024

watercolour and gouache, 36 × 26 cm

Interior with Marlow Moss, 2024

watercolour with gouache, 60 × 45 cm

A. E. Housman, Loveliest of Trees, 2023 oil on canvas, 120 × 100 cm

Interior with Dennis Mitchell, 2017 oil on canvas, 150 × 120 cm

Girl at a Window with Strawberries, 2024 oil on canvas, 80 × 70 cm

Magnum Opus I, 2024

watercolour and gouache, 36 × 26 cm

Magnum Opus III, 2024

watercolour and gouache, 36 × 26 cm

Magnum Opus II, 2024

watercolour and gouache, 36 × 26 cm

Magnum Opus IV, 2024

watercolour and gouache, 36 × 26 cm

The Iris Room, 2023

watercolour and gouache, 41 × 31 cm

Interior with Young Girl Reading III, 2024

watercolour and gouache, 36 × 26 cm

Interior with Young Girl Reading I, 2024

watercolour and gouache, 36 × 26 cm

Interior with Young Girl Reading II, 2024

watercolour and gouache, 36 × 26 cm

Yeats, Long-legged Fly, 2024 oil on canvas, 80 × 70 cm

Interior Girl Reading by a River and Narcissus, 2024

watercolour and gouache, 60 × 45 cm

Books by a Window with Cherries, 2024 watercolour and gouache, 60 × 45 cm

Stephen Spender, The Truly Great, 2023 oil on canvas, 100 × 80 cm

Sisters, 2024 oil on canvas, 80 × 80 cm

Sister and Brother, 2024 oil on canvas, 90 × 75 cm

William Carlos Williams, This is just to say, 2023 oil on board, 40 × 30 cm

Seamus Heaney, Anything can happen, 2023 oil on board, 47 × 37 cm

Seamus Heaney, A Dog was Crying to-night in Wicklow Also, 2024 oil on canvas, 80 × 70 cm

T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets, 2023 oil on canvas, 100 × 120 cm

Mother’s Making Men, 2023 oil on canvas, 80 × 70 cm

Interior with Amarylis, 2024

watercolour and gouache, 60 × 45 cm

Open Window, 2023 oil on canvas, 70 × 60 cm

LOTTIE COLE

2024

Solo Show, ‘A Commonplace, Collection of Paintings’, Long & Ryle, London

Group Show, ‘Transparency’, Lyndsey Ingram Gallery

London Art Fair, LOPF with Long & Ryle

2023

2022

London Art Fair, British Art Fair, LOPF with Long & Ryle

Modern British Art & Sussex Artists, Group Show

RWS Now - RWS Gallery, Whitcomb Street

Linden Hall Studio, Winter Group Show, Deal

Solo Show Home of the ‘Paleoethnobotanist & Other Stories’, Long & Ryle, London

Linden Hall Studio, Winter Group Show, Deal

London Art Fair, British Art Fair, LOPF with Long & Ryle

2021 London Art Fair with Long & Ryle

2020 ING Discerning Eye

Sunday Times Watercolour Competition

RWS Contemporary Watercolour Competition

2019 Selection of Work at Ainscough Gallery and Cricket Fine Art London & Hungerford, McAllister Thomas, Godalming

One the Square at Zimmer Stewart, Arundel

The Sunday Times Watercolour Competition Exhibition & Tour

March 8-20 Royal Watercolour Society Contemporary Watercolour Competition

2018 One the Square showcase, Forest Row

The Sunday Times Watercolour Competition Exhibition & Tour

Cricket Fine Art, London

‘The Tetrarch & Other Stories’

‘Recalled: Poetry & The London Library’

London Review of Books Cafe

2017

2016-17

2013

September Cricket Fine Art, Park Walk, London

Solo Show: Living with Art, Collectors’ Interiors

Potterton Books, London

October-July 2014 Lamb Chambers, Middle Temple

November, Solo Show, Cricket Fine Art, London

2011 The Studio Gallery, Christmas Show, Midhurst

Cricket Fine Art, London Moncrieff Bray Gallery, Edgean

2010 Moncrieff Bray Gallery, Solo Show, Edgean Thompson’s Gallery, London

2009

National Art Open, Group Exhibition Thompson’s Gallery, London

2007 Thompson’s Gallery, Group Exhibition, London

2005 Josephine Mews Fine Art, Solo Show

1991

1992-96

1996-97

1997-2017

Wimbledon Art College, Foundation

St Andrews University, Art History MA

Taught English in China

Worked in Museums & Galleries: National Portrait Gallery, Dulwich Picture Gallery, Royal Horticultural Society, London Library, Royal Institute of British Architects

Published by Long & Ryle Press

Online catalogue © Long & Ryle 2024

Works © Lottie Cole 2024

Interior with John Armstrong, Simon Bussy and Cedric Morris, 2017 oil on canvas, 150 × 120 cm

& Ryle

London

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