Henrietta LabouchereRecent Paintings
Henrietta Labouchere | Recent Paintings
Henrietta Labouchere was born in Field Dalling, North Norfolk in 1984. She
graduated with a BA in Fine Art (Painting) from Chelsea College of Art and
currently lives and works in Norfolk.
Since her days at college, Labouchere has been interested in paint – the way
it handles and flows on the panel. Her figures are boldly sketched, the sum
of several layers of colour, each painstakingly applied. Her compositions are
built up slowly, with nascent ideas and early missteps absorbed into the final
panel; a key part of the historical evolution of the painting.
Labouchere’s reading of Modernist literature, including J. D. Salinger,
Carson McCullers, W. G. Sebald (a declared source of inspiration), sparked
her fondness for lonely, dislocated figures. Sometimes the inspiration is
self-evident – her last exhibition, “For Esmé with Love and Squalor” owes its
title to a collection of short stories by J. D. Salinger – however, in most cases,
Labouchere simply strives to create compositions that radiate with the same
atmosphere. Alongside this literary inspiration, she is a tireless researcher
of photographic archives, searching for the flavour and details of an age she
revives with each and every brushstroke.
Her distinctive use of colour expresses her appreciation of and kinship with
a range of practitioners, from Piero della Francesca through to Cy Twombly
and Anselm Kiefer. The surface of her works - often rough and opaque -
implies, through texture, the sense that her work is already historical and
belonging to a bygone era.
Brimming with both nostalgia and empathy, Labouchere’s work is a profound
testimony to these ghosts of a recent past.
Two Figures, Geneva Oil on board, 65 x 50 cm, 2012
Figure in the Sun Oil on board
60 x 30 cm, 2012Girl with Red Hair I
Oil on board, 56 x 46 cm, 2012
Girl in Qianlong dress Oil on board60 x 30 cm, 2012
Girl with a Chair Oil on board, 51 x 41 cm, 2012
Figure with Peonies Oil on board, 56 x 46 cm, 2012
Girl with Red Hair II Oil on board, 56 x 46 cm, 2012
Seated WomanOil on board, 56 x 46 cm, 2012
Paris, TexasOil on board, 54 x 34 cm, 2012
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