Althea Battams

I love the way that light enters a room and illuminates small sections, creating dramatic areas, rather like spotlights onto a stage.

 

When this happens, the spaces between the objects, and the resulting shadow/light effects on the walls, ceiling, and floor, are as important as the objects themselves. This can be fascinating and beautiful even if the object is as lowly as a plastic laundry basket.

 

What interests me is not what the object is, and whether it is traditionally aesthetic, but how its structure, form and colour can create the essence of the painting.

 

Some of these paintings are of quite large sections in a room, others are very small areas containing single objects. Either way, the effect of the light has for me transformed them into something new.