> Emma Haworth - Fairy Tales in the City: 1 May – 16 May 2009 AT Charlotte Street, London
Emma Haworth paints real life. Her wonderfully detailed townscapes record the parks and streets, the squares and panoramas of London, New York and Paris. Combining ingenious simplification and a delight in specific detail, they are based on long, close, hard observation – and a brilliant sense of composition.
But they are also touched with magic, with a sense of the wonder and the romance of metropolitan existence. She celebrates the dynamic between people and place, subtly revealing both the way people’s behaviour is directed by the urban environment, and the way in which the urban space has been shaped by human needs.
She understands that both mystery and pattern lurk beneath the surface of life. Her last sell-out show at the Rebecca Hossack Art Gallery, in 2008, included several crowded park-scenes. They were beautiful paintings, full of light and colour and freshness of observation. Following the example of Pieter Bruegel, however, Haworth also seeded them with proverbial vignettes: the blind leading the blind, the horse being led to water (beside the Serpentine) but refusing to drink, the fool and his gold being parted.
Now she has taken the idea further. For her new exhibition (her fourth at the gallery) she has created a series of contemporary metropolitan scenes, bustling with life, but also dotted with modern-day references to the great archetypal fairy stories that we all share. It is an ingenious conceit, borrowed from the Renaissance tradition, but made fresh and vital in Haworth’s treatment.
But they are also touched with magic, with a sense of the wonder and the romance of metropolitan existence. She celebrates the dynamic between people and place, subtly revealing both the way people’s behaviour is directed by the urban environment, and the way in which the urban space has been shaped by human needs.
She understands that both mystery and pattern lurk beneath the surface of life. Her last sell-out show at the Rebecca Hossack Art Gallery, in 2008, included several crowded park-scenes. They were beautiful paintings, full of light and colour and freshness of observation. Following the example of Pieter Bruegel, however, Haworth also seeded them with proverbial vignettes: the blind leading the blind, the horse being led to water (beside the Serpentine) but refusing to drink, the fool and his gold being parted.
Now she has taken the idea further. For her new exhibition (her fourth at the gallery) she has created a series of contemporary metropolitan scenes, bustling with life, but also dotted with modern-day references to the great archetypal fairy stories that we all share. It is an ingenious conceit, borrowed from the Renaissance tradition, but made fresh and vital in Haworth’s treatment.