Stacie McCormick's 'Colour' exhibition curated by Maria Korolevskaya
In February this year, another important exhibition for The Art Partners took place in London. The company’s founder Maria Korolevskaya has worked as a curator for the solo exhibition of an incredibly talented multi-disciplinary artist Stacie McCormick, who has presented a completely new, unexpected and never-before-seen body of work. If you were unable to visit the exhibition you can explore the photographs and the show's message in this article.
About the exhibition:
Recently Stacie McCormick made an informed decision to return to colour, to set herself free and to explore colour in a more radical, transformative way. For a very long time, the artist’s practice involved a specific focus on monochrome paintings. It began whilst Stacie was doing her master's degree, the artist questioned her artistic direction, which at the time favoured colour and density. She wanted her work to say as much as possible with as little as possible, to be poetic and powerful. Hence, the artist reduced her palette in favour of one to two colours, monochrome tones and forms.
Image Courtesy of Stacie McCormick, Unit 1 Gallery | Workshop and Paul Tucker Photography
At the beginning of the first lockdown, in March 2020, the artist was given the freedom to re-envision her work. Stacie McCormick found herself alone and had the studio and the gallery to herself as well as the time to explore her work radically unobserved. Stacie had the opportunity to question the colours she used. The artist has felt instinctively drawn to more vibrant, joyful and rich colours. Her past monochrome practice felt too sombre and she wanted to create a radical partaking, in complete contrast to her previous work. Although, Helen Frankenthaler has always been one of the biggest inspirations for Stacie McCormick in her artistic journey. This exploration of bright and vibrant colours was healing and therapeutic for the artist during these vulnerable times, this need and the resulting curative nature of Stacie’s experience is academically investigated.
Stacie McCormick in front of her work. Image Courtesy of Stacie McCormick, Unit 1 Gallery | Workshop and Paul Tucker Photography
Individual aesthetic perceptions and judgements are mostly dependent on the accrual of knowledge and experiences. To discuss the importance of colour in artistic expression from a more scientific perspective, it is important to become familiar with Palmer and Schloss’s Ecological Valence Theory of human colour preference which was developed in 2010. This theory reveals that aesthetic preferences for certain colours are greater than others. In brief, it suggests that colour preferences usually arise from an individual’s affective responses to colour-associated items. As an illustration, blue may be preferred by various individuals because in the perceiver’s mind it is associated with sky and water. It may seem that certain colour preferences are universal, who doesn’t like a clean blue sky or a bright orange sun? However, this concept is much deeper than it may seem at first, as each individual is unique. Each person’s preference for a particular colour is determined largely by his/her distinctive preferences for correspondingly coloured objects, which are in turn affected by personal experiences and cognitions. Therefore, this exhibition has been a wonderful opportunity for visitors to observe and experience firsthand how exactly the artist’s mind affects her artistic development and vision. It has allowed the public to propose an answer to the question that the artist was asking herself during this period of personal and creative search. This show has invited the viewer to observe, get lost and explore Stacie’s colourful labyrinth.
