London based artist Christabel Blackburn studied Classics at Newcastle University. Eager to explore her artistic talent, she spent a year in Florence at Charles Cecil Studios learning traditional drawing and sculpting techniques. She then went on to study for two years at the London Atelier of Representational Art where she learnt to paint and continued to develop her skills in sculpting.
Christabel’s work has evolved dramatically over the past ten years, moving away from traditional techniques and adopting a more minimal approach. An almost sole focus on painting people has cultivated a talent for capturing the essence of a person and she now seeks to explore the nature of what it means to be human in a chaotic world.
Christabel’s most recent series explores the relationship between ourselves and our surroundings. With photographic stillness, her paintings capture moments experienced in everyday life, from a street scene to a lone figure in an art gallery. Christabel has an instinctive and innate ability to convey the psyche of her subject matter without facial expression, by stripping back and using minimal information, allowing the viewer to exchange places with figure, becoming part of the painting itself. Christabel finds solace, space and quiet in these situations in an increasingly busy and fast paced city, and it is these moments of stillness she seeks to encapsulate in her paintings
