Victoria Horkan | DegreeArt.com The Original Online Art Gallery

Victoria Horkan

Victoria Horkan

Leeds University (BA Hons Textile Design , 2011)

Victoria Horkan’s work offers a bold, vibrant and expressive milieu of forms and colours that falls somewhere between the realms of impressionism, abstraction and expressionism. Taking inspiration from the natural world, her paintings make reference to creatures from the sky and sea.

Yet her work is by no means directly representational and alludes to subjects such as birds and butterfl ies by offering a mere suggestion of their forms rather than any literal or realistic transcriptions. She playfully engages with scale and perspective, making large what is typically small but her central focus is on colour, gesture and mark making. Pure, bright colours that are set in sharp contrasts of light and dark, warm and cold are combined with loose, distinct brushstrokes that resonate strongly with the impressionist tradition. These strong, confidently placed marks are the sign of an assured and mature artist and the manner in which they are applied creates a sense of movement, giving the work an energetic, flickering quality that is particularly evident in her underwater scenes.

Horkan is indeed fascinated by the idea of transcribing sensation and used to sit in the dance studios at Bretton Hall College in order to try and capture the dancers’ movements through sketching. Horkan is aware of what a powerful stimulus colour can be and recognises its capacity to affect mood and to generate particular emotions. She strives to make good use of this in her art, believing painting should be able to move the viewer in much the same way that music may move the listener.

Kandinsky was the first artist to seriously explore the connections between music and art, believing musical and visual expression could be used to simultaneously illuminate and intensify each other. He saw the two subjects as deeply interconnected and claimed that ‘generally speaking, colour is a power which directly influences the soul. Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with the strings. The artist is the hand which plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul’.

 

'The Woods'

Such theories seem to apply to Horkan’s work. She is not looking to translate a particular narrative or to provide work that is radically conceptual. Rather she seeks to leave the viewer with a lasting impression, to bring them to a place of joy even on the darkest of days and her colourful paintings radiate an energy that is truly uplifting and invigorating. At times, the process of painting takes her into totally abstract realms and this is where Horkan herself experiences the joy of artistic epiphany, absorbed only in the mark making and the application of colour, she finds herself totally free to express the vision that comes from within.

Having already exhibited in London, Leeds, Belfast and Edinburgh and with clients in America, Italy, Dubai and Abu Dhabi Victoria Horkan is definitely a name to watch.

100 × 100 × 4 cm
  • £3,400.00
100 × 100 × 4 cm
  • £3,000.00
76 × 76 × 1 cm
  • £300.00
100 × 100 × 4 cm
  • £3,500.00
100 × 100 × 4 cm
  • £3,400.00
40 × 80 × 1 cm
  • £300.00
65 × 95 × 1 cm
  • £300.00
76 × 76 × 1 cm
  • £300.00
76 × 76 × 1 cm
  • £300.00

Exhibitions

  The View Gallery , Group show,  July- September 2012 La Galleria, Pall Mall, Solo Show March 2012 Off The Wall Gallery, Cardiff. Group show, February, 2012 Bluemoon Gallery, Tunbridge Wells, Group show  January  2012 Buy Art Fair, Manchester. October, 2011 Meller Mercuex Gallery, Witney. Solo show ‘Nature’s Paradise’ 01st September – 26th September 2011 Group Exhibition ‘Meller Merceux’ Oxford, Sept 2011              Group exhibition ‘Outside the Square Gallery’, Kent,  March 2011 Group exhibition’ The Lloyd Gill Gallery’, Weston Super Mare ‘Exploring Fluidity: The Ebb and Flow of Control’, Jan 2011 Joint exhibition ‘The Bowery ‘ Leeds (Motion of the Mind), 2011 Joint exhibition ‘The Art Gallery’ Tetbury, 2011 Manchester Buy Art Fair, 2010 Solo exhibition ‘ Lagalleria Gallery’, Pall Mall, London 2010 Solo exhibition (Movement)  in Islington, London 2010 Joint exhibition, Oxmarket Gallery, Chichester, 2010 Large scale solo project (17 commissions) for private client in Isle of Man, 2010 The Malvern Theatres, Worcestershire, 2009 Group exhibition, Castletown, Isle of Man, 2009 Manchester Buy Art Fair, 2009 Group exhibition, Knapp Gallery, Regents Park, London, 2008 Special feature on BBC1 Website, 2008 Group exhibition in Leeds, Artco displaying collections alongside pioneering British artists such as Alan Davie and Patrick Caulfield, 2008 Worked with art consultants in Ireland on a large solo project, 2007 Collection of paintings published in Interior Design Special Esquire Magazine, 2007        Exhibited at the Affordable Art Fair London, 2007        Exhibited in Belfast, Blue 73 Gallery, 2006 Exhibited at The Edinburgh Art Fair, 2006        Exhibited at The Great Art Fair London, 2006             Freelance textile designer ‘Rogue’ Manchester 2002

Awards

Shortlisted for the 2011 British Women Artists Award, Winner of the Healthcare and Bioscience Art Competition, May 2009

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