Thelma Pott was born in 1984. She lives and works in Porto and London. After finishing her studies at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon, she took her MA in Curatorial Studies at the Royal Academy of Arts of the University of Coimbra in Portugal. In 2013 she won the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Project Grant. Potts started exhibiting her work in 2017 as one of the artists from the art coalition Hands off our Revolution in the group show Poster at BlackBall Projects Gallery in New York.
Hands Off Our Revolution kicked off Thursday, February 16, 2017, with an animated web banner by British artist Mark Titchner that read: “Hands off our borders; Hands off our cities; Hands off our homes; Hands off our planet; Hands off our justice; Hands off our loves; Hands off our lives[…]”. Hands-off is a group of artists united to counter small-minded prejudice. Their art affirms their humanity and they insist on the inclusion of all and for all. They call for action by people of good conscience to stand against the abhorrent policies of the governments that claim to represent us.
Among these artists are John Akomfrah, Laurie Anderson, Yto Barrada, Sophie Calle, Olafur Eliasson, Douglas Gordon, Anish Kapoor, William Kentridge, Steve McQueen, Ed Ruscha, Hito Steyerl and Wolfgang Tillmans.
In 2018 as well as in 2019 her work was distinguished by the Canadian art magazine: Art Ascent. Her work featured in the artist’s directory at the June/July edition of the British art magazine Aesthetica. She was also published by the British art magazine Inside Artists in their Spring Summer 2020 edition and she featured in the first edition of Art Hole Magazine. Among other exhibitions, in Autumn 2019 her work was exhibited in Cologne, Germany, as she won the Reclaim Award 2019 which sees the artist’s work displayed on public billboards. In 2020 she exhibited at Rossocinabro Gallery in Rome in the group exhibition Co-Existence 7 during April – July. Her next show is another group show in Rome in November curated by Monica Ferrarini.
In 2021 she will be exhibiting in Florence Biennale in Italy. Her photographic work can be seen in LensCulture.
Self-taught or art school?
After finishing my studies at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Lisbon, I took my MA in Curatorial Studies at the Royal Academy of Arts of the University of Coimbra in Portugal.
If you could own one work of art what would it be?
Luc Tuymans’ painting The Rabbit from 1994.
How would you describe your style?
Post-Modern abstraction.
Can you tell us about your artistic process?
I start by spreading the colours with the help of stainless steel laboratory spatulas – diverting them from their original function and discovering new freedom with technique. When I’m preparing a colour, I mixture different amounts of turpentine in the oil to vary the thickness of the paint layers, to fade the colour into a multitude of shades and to create translucent points in the painting. That allows a diffuse transmission of light while respecting its changing spectrum in the composition. I play constantly with juxtapositions of matt with gloss and solid with stripes that are produced by using spatulas and sometimes large brushes. Technically, the structure of the paint layer contributes significantly to the variations of space[s] within the composition, whose light intensity alternately vibrates or subsides.
In my paintings, there is always a colour which stands out. They are composed against a bright background, so much so that the light emerges from the layers of paint of the work itself. I usually cover the surface of the canvas with solid areas of colour that, by rubbing or scraping, reveal the presence of other coloured spaces underneath. I’m exploring the potential of the gestural and the ability of colour to illuminate, through contrast, the opposition between form and content and to produce a play of spaces according to the surface conditions of the paint layers.
Also the interaction between my paintings and the incident ambient light of infinite variations – natural or artificial light and surrounding reflections – models the space that extends between the painting and the viewer. The experience of the canvas thereby plays a part in a triangular relationship between painting, lighting and point of view that is constantly renewed according to the movement of the viewer. The specific apprehension of these paintings, which is linked to the diffusion of a light field on a colour field, reflected in and by the canvas, depends on the angle from which it is viewed. It includes the public as an active participant in the creation of the artwork.
Is narrative important within your work?
I believe that everything is narrative so yes, narrative is important in my work.
Who are your favourite artists and why?
There are thirteen artists who are very important to me: Pierre Soulages, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, Takesada Matsutani, Ad Reinhardt, Gerhard Richter, Luc Tuymans, Frank Bowling, Robert Rauschenberg, Bruce Nauman, Tacita Dean, Wolfgang Tillmans, Olafur Eliasson and Pierre Huyghe. I feel a great connection between my own work and theirs as their particular way of seeing the world and their honesty in expressing it is inspiring. Also, their work is ongoing research on the study of light, space, colour, gesture, memory, History, politics and environments.
What or who inspires your art?
Life. Life inspires my art. I’m interested in what’s going on in the world outside and in what it triggers inside me.
Where’s your studio and what’s it like?
My studio is at Porto, where I’m currently based. I would like it to be bigger as more space would bring a different scale to the canvas, but for now, it’s ok.
Do you have any studio rituals?
When I’m working I need to be focused on what I’m painting so there are no cameras and no-one documenting it. Art to me it’s a very private, intimate and lonely process.
What are you working on currently?
I’m working on a new series entitled Isolation, after Joy Division’s song.
Where can we buy your art?
At Saatchi and by email at thelmapott@gmail.com.
“My work is an ongoing investigation about the metaphysics of space, about the spatial phenomenon in painting. I’m interested in the conventions, materials, public and private roles of painting, as well as whether perception enables or confuses our understanding of the world.
My artistic practice addresses the following questions:
How can we explore spaces that function in non-hegemonic conditions and that are simultaneously physical and mental in painting?
How can abstraction open up a mental field all of its own by reorganizing visual and psychological experience?
How can a type of painting offer an immersive experience to the viewer?
What does pictorial spatiality consist of?
What is the pictorial space expressing?
It is known that the spatial relations in humans develop on two levels: the sensorimotor (perceptual) level that gives us the “sense” of space and the representational (intellectual) level that gives us the “idea” of space. The first is a product of haptic development and the latter is a development of symbolic activity through speech and image. Abstraction opens up a mental field all of its own. In this sense, my painting is a continuous investigation into abstraction’s power to reorganize visual and psychological experience.
My intention is to create a body of artworks offering new opportunities of experiencing the metaphysics of space by stimulating the viewer’s intuitive sense of interior and exterior space(s). I’m interested in the potential of this fundamental association between the image and the imagination, the invisible contemplated within the visible – that is claimed to underpin
a contemporary understanding of the nature of images. The gaze between viewer and image can be conceptualized phenomenologically within the unresolved circularity of the exchange between image and viewer; the image opens up a portal, an abstract space, that offers an invitation to meditation on other spaces”.
