“In my drawings and paintings, I want to celebrate earthly beauty and humble experience. Using colours that resonate with emotion, and conversing with the rich visual poetry of flowers, I make simple lines and shapes to try to depict just the essence of the subjects. I take notes from the changing seasons, flowers and the simplicity of everyday objects.
I paint and draw from my imagination, the pictures in my mind’s eye, or my memory. I’m interested in the feeling a colour or a flower gave me, or the recollection of an image.
I try to convey the mood or emotion of the subject rather than an accurate depiction; the feeling of the bowl on a table, the exuberance of a bouquet, the melancholy of beauty past its prime, or anticipation of nature in bud. I like flowers to be abstracted, whether dancing across the paper or sitting primly in a sturdy jug.
I am drawn to the imperfect, the wilted bloom or cracked porcelain, and like to engage with themes of transience and fragility of life, transformation, decay and renewal.
Femininity and the female body… symbolised by pots and vessels, curved shapes to depict a harmony of strength and softness.
The ephemeral and the eternal.”
Pascale Cumberbatch, November 2024
Pascale Cumberbatch is British/French artist whose practice spans painting, drawing, photography and occasional printmaking. Her work is centred on themes of earthly beauty and humble experience, using colours that resonate with emotion and conversing with the rich visual poetry of flowers.
Pascale draws and paints from memory or imagination, seeking to convey mood rather than accurate depiction. She uses simple lines and shapes to distill just the essence of the subjects; the feeling of the bowl on a table, the exuberance of a bouquet, the melancholy of beauty past its prime, or anticipation of nature in bud. Her flowers are abstracted, whether dancing across the paper or sitting primly in a sturdy jug. She is drawn to the imperfect, the wilted bloom or cracked porcelain, exploring the transience and delicacy of life, transformation, decay and renewal.
Pascale consciously depicts flowers, generally considered a feminine subject, as emblems of potency rather than fragility. Woven throughout her work is the female experience and her position of being a woman in the world; the flowers and pots, symbollc of femininity and the female body, represent womanhood and the particular story this tells.
Pascale has travelled, lived, studied and worked across many corners of the world, these experiences deeply influencing her work. She studied Anthropology as her first degree at the University of California, Los Angeles. She later studied Photography at University of the Arts, London, and completed an MA in Contemporary Fine Art at Oxford Brookes University, Oxford in 2015. Alongside her practice based at Magdalen Road Studios in Oxford, Pascale regularly spends time and finds inspiration at her home in France.