Charlotte Cornish

Charlotte Cornish

Colour is at the heart of Charlotte Cornish’s work. Vivid, fluid and intensely layered, her paintings and prints explore the ways in which colour can create tension, movement and unexpected harmony, transforming personal experience into richly abstract compositions.

Working professionally as a painter and printmaker for more than three decades, Cornish has developed a distinctive visual language in which painting and printmaking continually inform one another. Her early training in printmaking remains integral to her approach: each layer is considered as a separate element, building gradually into compositions that feel both spontaneous and carefully resolved.

Inspiration often begins with a place. Travel, landscape and locations of personal significance are captured through photographs and small studies before gradually becoming abstracted. Rather than describing a particular view, Cornish draws upon the atmosphere of an experience — its colour, energy, sound and sensation — allowing memory to reshape what was originally observed.

Her paintings are created predominantly in acrylic, built through successive layers of poured colour and more directly applied marks. Thin translucent veils sit alongside areas of greater density, creating surfaces with a tangible sense of depth and movement. Working with the canvas flat allows paint to flow freely, while the quick-drying nature of acrylic gives Charlotte Cornish the freedom to continually add, remove and reconsider individual elements. A single painting may evolve over many weeks.

Across both painting and print, there is a compelling balance between control and unpredictability. Forms overlap, colours collide and translucent passages reveal traces of what lies beneath. The result is work that feels constantly in motion — an accumulation of place, memory and experience held together through the extraordinary possibilities of colour.

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