Claire

About the artist

I moved to London in the early 1980%u2019s to study at Central St Martins School of Art and design and have been based in London since then.I work in a range of mediums including painting, clay, collage, glass and print. My most recent works are in glass and print.After completing my degree at art school, I became increasingly interested in the connection between art and psychology and this led to my undertaking study in Art Therapy. I am a qualified Art therapist and my professional life has been one wherein I have worked with people with mental health issues using art therapy as the milieu in which to explore both psychological and practical issues. At the same time and in a connected way I have continued in my own art practice.My early work was very influenced by observation and interpretation of the external world, the world %u2018outside%u2019. However, very much influenced by my Art therapy training I soon became fascinated by the life of the unconscious, our %u2018inner %u2018world and this in turn precipitated a development in my own work.My large-scale paintings were more of a journey of the imagination as well as incorporating figurative self-image. Looking back on some of that work now I think it was also a representation of my own sense of development as a young woman.This body of work was shown at a community-based gallery in North London.Following this period my work again shifted and I was interested in visually representing both the internal world of the psyche and emotions and the external world of nature. I would use landscapes as the building blocks into which self-images, figures and other elements from nature and architecture were used symbolically.Latterly in my career I became very interested in the qualities glass offered as a medium. I again returned to study this time in post graduate work in fine art and architectural glass. I see glass as a very transformative material; both fragile and tough, rigid but also having the capacity to become liquid when heated sufficiently. It is %u2018reflective%u2019 and also something we can %u2018look through%u2019A metaphor for %u201Cother worlds. | Pieces of my glass work were shown at the Jeanetta Cochrane Gallery in North LondonI now work predominantly in silkscreen print, sometimes combining this with glass. The subject matter of my work is figurative and is concerned both with %u2018capturing %u2018 a moment in time but also representing an imprint of history. One of my prints was shown at the Royal Academy summer exhibition in London My influences artistically are many and varied. The surrealists, particularly women such as Dorotha Tanning, Leanora Carrington and Marie Toyen.I like the unsettling beauty of Peter Doig and the love of life in the work of David Hockney to name a few. | I was and very much continue to be both influenced and interested in the legacy of the psychoanalyst Carl Jung with the rich legacy of his work in archetypal imagery and interpretation of dreams and fables. 909a42e2-147a-47a8-8fef-491d601b2161;12359d8e-51f8-4ba9-bb56-817ed200233c

More about Stephanie Wright

About the artwork

This is an image of Claire, my stepdaughter. I worked on a photo I took of her and translated it into a silkscreen. I think she looks free and completly at home in her own skin in the image