Colour as Place

This exhibition, brings together the work of Lizzie Thurman and Joan Hecktermann, two artists who use colour as a way of grounding experience and memory.

For Thurman, colour arises from sensory experience and physical contact with the landscape, through the act of walking - a distillation of mountain pass, rock-form and riverbed. She creates textured, shrine-like drawings where gestural marks hold the rhythm of an encounter. For Hecktermann, colour functions as a vessel for memory, where hues echo and reawaken fragments of the past, summoning places and moments through sensation rather than clarity.

​Lizzie Thurman is an intuitive creative, addressing common human enquiry through physical and sensory experiences. Her recent work is an evolving retort to the solitary ventures she undertakes amidst the exposed landforms, water and pathways of the Matarraña region of Spain. From a terraced roof top, she works on paper, creating shrine-like drawings that reveal natural connections with the landscape. Initial marks are impulsive gestures and subsequent colour developments, outcomes of an abstracted representation or simply, an expression of experience. She is assisted by reference notebooks and fragments of collected rock which are scrutinised to extract form and earth tones. Thurman wrestles with, atmospheric hues, which are blended to luminous effect until the perfect tension emerges and a dialogue begins to form. Throughout this focused process, internal landscapes inevitably influence her direction of play. Irregular palettes and recurring shapes in her work form the foundation of a maturing but constantly evolving, visual language.

Hecktermann says: "My practice explores the relationship between memory and colour - how hues can hold, distort and re-awaken the past. I am fascinated by the way colour functions as both a trigger and a container for memory, capable of transporting us into moments that are intimate, fragmented or half forgotten. I am interested in creating work that feels like an echo, a feeling that lingers in the mind. I want to capture these ephemeral moments where recollection is less about clarity and more about sensation. A single shade or combinations of colours can summon a forgotten place, a moment or something lost. By inviting viewers into these colour fields, I hope to awaken their own associations and to find their memories reflected in the colours and silence."

Though their practices emerge from different sources, both artists arrive at a shared understanding of colour as more than just surface. In this fascinating show, colour becomes place: a site where memory, perception and experience converge, and where viewers are invited to find their own associations within these shifting environments.