Paintings by Lupe Cunha
Main Gallery
Foyer Gallery
In the Main Gallery is the culmination of a year of Lupe Cunha’s latest work, in which she develops a large number of new canvases, big and small, exploring her continuing research into using colour to abstract the figurative into an emotional response that speaks to her viewers. Simultaneously, some of her landscape painting students exhibit in the Foyer Gallery.
Brazilian-born Lupe Cunha has lived in the UK since 1980, working first in photography and more recently as a lecturer in further and higher education, as well as developing her fine art practice.
In addition to running courses on Digital Photography and Photoshop, she also exhibits her artwork which includes photography, painting and printmaking.
Recently she has begun providing a range of workshops at various galleries and art venues around Hertfordshire.
In this exhibition she combines the wonderful range of countryside seen around Hertfordshire with her continuing love of coastal areas. These were not originally intended to be part of this show but the theme has demanded its presence following a brief interlude in her homeland of Brazil doing the preparation of the work. (right: Silo Fields)
This body of work focuses on the expressive bursts of colour so characteristic of her work. This is the first complete body of painting that Lupe has produced since the completion of her large colour canvas for her MA in Fine Arts achieved end of 2007. For lovers of Lupe’s approach to colour and landscape this is an exhibition not to be missed. 
During the exhibition, Lupe Cunha will also be running a series of painting workshops at the Arts Centre during the second and third weeks of April (Tues, Wed and Thursday April 13 - 15, 1.30pm to 4:00pm; Tues, Wed and Thursday April 20 - 22, 10.30am to 1.00pm) at a special cost of £35.00 for three days) where she will introduce newcomers to her style of painting. (right: Coastal Waters)
The daughter of the Brazilian Consul in Chicago, Cunha worked as a newspaper photographer in the US before emigrating to Britain. She practised as a professional photographer for 20 years in south Hertfordshire and lived in the same road as Victoria Beckham during her pre-Spice Girl days as a model and was assigned to take glamour shots of her. Cunha’s work also appeared in Cosmopolitan, She, Bella, Best and Woman’s Journal. Throughout her career as a photographer she had admired the art movements of Abstract Expressionism and Color Field, the style of abstract painting that emerged in New York in the 1950s and 60s, and with a view to switching from photography to painting enrolled in 2000 on the BA course in Fine Art at the University of Hertfordshire. She later took an MA.
Her painting of this early period focuses on abstract expressionist interpretations of the landscape and architecture near her home. Two of her favourite British artists are Ivon Hitchens and John Piper and in her workshop classes she emphasises the way in which Piper uses colour accents in his topographical art. Her own digital and film manipulations, often based on architectural prints, owe much to the use by Piper of photographic images enhanced by overlaid colour, but she goes much further than him in creating expressionist abstracts through these methods.
Her versatility also extends to print-making of all kinds, though she is especially excited by the possibilities of the monoprint and the lesser known collagraph, which is a version of the latter that uses cardboard as a plate.
In all her work Cunha sees herself as primarily a colourist. Her latest project, a series of six large wall panels in acrylic, is her personal take on the notion of Color Field. She plans to hang them away from the wall so they confront the viewer with the maximum impact. “By seeming to float they will have the effect of encompassing the spectator’s whole field of vision,” she explains. “The viewer will be enveloped by that particular colour.”
The Foyer Gallery features the work of six of her Master Class of Landscape Painting students: Chris Odell, Judith Bywater, Delphine Hill, Caroline Tyler, Ruth Ward and Judith McKay. (Below: Ode to a Bluebell Wood, by Chris Odell. Top: Barns by Lupe Cunha)
From:
Thursday, 1 April
To:
Friday, 30 April
Admission:
Open Monday to Friday 10.00 am to 5.00 pm. Saturday 10.00 am to 3.00 pm. Admission is free to all Galleries.
Link:
Lupe Cunha 
