Christine Watson’s paintings, pastels and etchings seek out the essential qualities of the island towns of the Mediterranean and most currently the mountains villages and towns of North Africa, revealing the richness of spaces and surfaces without sentiment or nostalgia. Steps and stairways, walls and roofs, windows and doors, streets and alleyways – the fabric of habitation – are revealed as they are, aged by wear and weather. . Watson’s current work explores the abstract qualities of these spaces, their light and shade, their texture and colour. She often depicts people as they go about their daily lives – in the markets, chatting in the streets, ascending steps, riding motorbikes. Yet in some works the people have abandoned the frame, leaving their absence along with the crumbling surfaces and vibrant colours as the main subject matter. A recent series of etchings explore the textures and details of fragments of sculptures from ancient Rome. Layers of aquatint and stop out medium recreate the now crumbling surfaces recalling the grandeur of the past city.
Christine Watson was born in 1958 in Southsea, Hants. She studied at Winchester School of Art and the Slade School of Fine Art. In 1985 she was recipient of the EA Abbey Award in Painting with a residency at the British School at Rome. Christine shows work regularly in London and Greece and regularly exhibited at Gallery K in Hampstead and the Pastel Society when she was the Schmicke Prizewiner in 2015. Catalogues of her work have been published in 1994, 2003 and 2008.
