Seeing Colours

So often in life we opt for the easy way out. We choose to drive instead of walk, eat takeaway instead of a home-cooked meal and pick black over colours. Young creatives Lauren Green and Joshua Maxwell de Hoog certainly aren’t afraid of a challenge and have used every colour at their disposal to create a vibrant dual exhibition at Courthouse ARTS.
It may be a tricky feat to create an artwork of varying and complementing colours, but the two artists have done it all in their stride. Their ability to take what may seem like random colours and make them work is a testament to their ability and the strength behind their visions.
“I am addicted to colours, every single colour in the world. My works are always vibrant with bold abstract colours. Nowadays I have been exploring separating colour with line and texture rather than blending it as a whole,” Lauren says.
For Lauren, she’s been a longtime lover of colour, but it was a trip through Central America that inspired her circular coloured discs in the exhibition. “The wild and messy colours that seem to blur together when you’re on the move, endless time to think and enabling me create ideas in my head,” she says.
With a more abstract and emotive style, Joshua’s inspiration is a bit harder to pinpoint – although he looks to a few artists to get the creative juices flowing.
“I’m massively inspired by Wes Lang, I like when artists are okay with being sporadic, or scattered when it comes to subject matter. I think I like to paint about certain times in my life rather than events, and that comes from looking and learning from Lang’s work,” Joshua says.
“I can’t talk about inspiration without mentioning Basquiat. For similar reasons, he has such a good body of work for such a short time painting. I didn’t think I was really inspired by work ethic, but maybe that’s it.”
Normally combining two such vastly different painting styles would be a curating sin, but the strong focus of colour ties the two artists works together to create an exhibition that feels complete.
Courthouse ARTS curator Courtney Ward can be thanked for the end result, as she used her artistic eye to pair the two emerging artists together – before the exhibition, Joshua and Lauren didn’t know each other.
When&Where: Courthouse ARTS Gallery – on now until September 26
By Amanda Sherring