True Circle of Motion

Both artists rely on the expressive quality of paint for their works to be understood and share an intuitive connection with the material of paint that allows them to express aspects of their lives, memories and psychological states. From a line in Eagle Poem written in 1951 by Joy Harjo, ‘True Circle of Motion’ evokes our connection with the language of nature, through the prism of spirituality and links to the life affirming statements delineated in Filips and Hamper’s works.

Huddie Hamper (b.1999) is a figurative painter and musician from Chatham, UK. As an emerging artist, he is continually refining his approach to image making. Primarily, Hamper draws directly onto canvas in charcoal, and then builds up layers of paint to achieve an image that is both evocative and nuanced. Given Hamper’s background in printmaking where he portrays figurative and natural scenes, Huddie’s technique coalesces to create works that can be seen as fluid renditions of fleeting moments in time.

Huddie Hamper desires that his works speak for themselves, and refrains from imposing pre-determined meanings, interpretations and readings of his creations onto his viewers. The joy of painting for him derives from its ability to express aspects of his current life and psychological states; it is in essence, an intuitive process and a means of discovery. Hamper hopes that through the aesthetic forms of his works, such as the balance of line, shape and colour on canvas, he can bring together dividing lines in terms of culture, society, on a local and universal level. As he says, “there is an urge to create, to describe forms in paint that feel natural to me. I aim to communicate the beauty, and sometimes darkness that is in the world around us.”

After completing a foundation course at UCA Rochester, Huddie went on to study painting at the Slade School of Fine Art, graduating in 2021. His first solo exhibition, The Outset, was held at Lilford Gallery, Canterbury in 2022 and he contributed works to the White Columns Benefit Exhibition, New York (2022). Hamper is also the lead singer and a guitarist in The Shadracks with whom he has released two LP records. Huddie lives in London and continues to paint at the Billy Childish Studio in Chatham.

Elizaveta Fillips (b.1997) is a Russian emerging artist of Ukrainian heritage, currently based in Paris. Filips melds together an expressive and diverse visuality that encompasses hope and despair, light and dark, the sublime and the ludicrous. Her subject matter and visual themes create an engaging hybrid of surrealistic worlds and personal memories. Elizaveta Filips successfully translates the subjects that inspire her such as hip-hop figures, idols and musical icons into seductive, translucent and shadowy figures that burst with dynamic colour and tone.

Filips’ artistic process involves creating abstract compositions that are phantasmagoric in their nature. The mesmerising environments and settings she creates derive from Fillips’ negotiation of the line between gestural brushwork and the exchange of blurred and detailed drawing. Her works are thus filled with mysterious characters and events that unfold before the viewer. The ambiguity and intangibility of human form deprived of any evaluation by Fillips ensures the images are blurred through the literal absence of faces on them. Sometimes you see human figures emerging from the quiet and chaotic desolate landscape of her art and other times you see nothing more than a dynamic splashing of colour. It is this abstraction and looseness that allows Filips the freedom of experimentation and expression she is best known for.

Filips describes her work as a process of visual storytelling where the “scenario of one painting gradually transfers to another.” By reflecting on the past and flirting with the present, Filips’ canvases are richly built up layers of mashed colours and environments that sporadically resemble mystical adventure or a “theatre of the unconscious”. Similar to Hamper, Filips’ art never tells us, the viewer, how to feel. Rather it is the emotional impact of the work, created by its chaotic richness, that drives Filips to create.