Notes

Olivie in the Pink Room is a portrait of one of Chaplin’s close friends – painted from life. ‘She paints the places and people most familiar to her, yet her still lifes, portraits, landscapes and nudes feel at once closely intimate but slightly removed. Often revisiting her subjects, Chaplin constantly mines their surfaces in an effort to capture a fleeting essence, be it the private interior of her studio, a plant on the windowsill or a familiar face … Working spontaneously Chaplin’s loose brushstrokes simultaneously coalesce and fall apart. The subject is rendered secondary to the pleasure of painting, to the materiality and movements of the marks. Chaplin’s intuitive translations are inexact; uncertain spaces with curious compositions, yet she skillfully captures the interplay of light, the atmosphere of place, and the emotive quality of her subjects … Her suggestive, rather than illustrative, approach lends her paintings a dreamlike quality. Because they are not intricately described, the works appear as a vague memory, slipping away, and moving towards her paintings, the forms dissolve into pools of colour and brush marks. It is only from a distance that the composition recovers itself, and the dream becomes fleetingly lucid.’¹

1. WHATIFTHEWORLD. (2016) Binding Forms, [Online] Available: https://www.whatiftheworld. com/exhibition/binding-forms/ [7 December 2018].

Exhibited

WHATIFTHEWORLD, Cape Town, Binding Forms, 22 June to 27 August 2016.