Stephanie Tuckwell

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Space, light, balance 2021

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Stephanie studied textiles at Goldsmiths, London and throughout her career has exhibited mixed media work both nationally and internationally. Six years ago she graduated with a MA (Distinction) in Multidisciplinary Printmaking from UWE, Bristol. In recent years she has focussed on exploring watercolour which has led her to exhibit regularly with the Royal Watercolour Society, Royal Institute of Watercolours and Sunday Times Watercolour Exhibition.

 

Stephanie draws inspiration from her experiences and memories of the natural world; the intimacy of a garden, or a coastal region, where the land meets the sea. From these moments and recollections she paints to create work that has a sense of time unfolding, where nothing is static but forever in a state of becoming and where a sense of permanence and impermanence are implied. She works very directly and intuitively, letting each piece evolve to find its own identity, somewhere between abstraction and figuration. Stephanie works in series and re-visits themes whenever she feels compelled to do so.

 

With painting, Stephanie explores and exploits the intrinsic qualities of materials and processes, contrasting the immediacy, fluidity and transparency of watercolour with the opacity and softness of dry media and occasionally, the more defined edges of cut collaged paper. For her, painting is an activity analogous to making music; forms and shapes dance to find their own rhythm, sometimes dissolving into a space whilst others are interrupted by a line or a mark. These are orchestrated until they become an image that evokes a real or imagined space.

 

The traditional process of etching is the focus of Stephanie's printmaking.  She works playfully and frequently subverts the painstaking process of the discipline by using swift strokes of paint or pierced passages to disrupt the surface or edge of an image. In contrast to her painting, her prints are intentionally small and plates are reused multiple times; rather like her painting, each final print has to find its own identity through the process of making.

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Stephanie has been the recipient of many awards, including the following:

2016 Runner up Winsor & Newton, RWS Open Competition, London

2016 Commended, Welsh Drawing Book, exhibition, Carmarthen

2013 Consumer Intelligence 1st prize for Watercolours, RWA 161st Open, Bristol

2013 Exhibition Award, Royal Watercolour Society, London

2009 Regional prize-winner for Wales, Discerning Eye, London

2008 Prize-winner the University of Glamorgan Art Purchase Prize