Ffiona Lewis

b. 1964. She spent her formative years in Devon. After qualifying as an architect she turned to painting professionally. She now lives and works in London.

This new body of painting is the culmination of a year's residency at Aldeburgh Music's, The Pumphouse.

Lewis immersed herself into the local community and landscape - a new community of food producers, farmer's markets, fishermen shacks, tea rooms and boatyards; a new landscape of shifting mud flats, salt marshes and dark shingle coastlines - and struck a rich new vein of glimpses.

Glimpses, alighted on while on foot, or on wheels, they capture the moment - little suspensions of ‘the moment’ made stronger through restraint and understatement.

There is a return to familiar social glimpses with family and friends – the meal.

These feast gatherings, particularly in Lewis's new environment, offer rich opportunities, where she can initiate an inconspicuous base, and gradually have the time to pick up the social groups minutiae.

As topographical captures, Lewis develops these vignettes individually and as groups of postcard paintings – ‘Contact Sheets’. A significant moment of trivia tightly knit with others making a whole experience. A miscellany of table spoils, used condiments, empty platters and fabric fragments register an inner sense of a moment.

Lewis is a huge fan of the printed postcard. Postcards and their collecting - particularly the less elaborate gimmicks play a large part in Lewis's sketching, research and development. A period of collection and sketching offer a way in, a starting point.

The Pumphouse studio’s vast floor area more than provided huge spread out space to develop and hone the various assemblages and larger oil panels chronicling the moment and found scenarios around Lewis's studio life in Aldeburgh.