Soothsayer

'The scrying surface and the divined message'

Charlotte Roseberry’s practise experiments with the ‘process’ of painting and its magical, mystical outcome. She is interested in the materiality of paint and the ways in which painting can manifest, and constrain, her creativity. Working mainly in oils, she produces contemplative compositions of semi-organic marks and forms that are contrasted with a sharper, jarring, graphic style. Her work is open to accidental and experimental mark making (reminiscent of the automatic drawing and painting of the Surrealist movement) allowing for ‘conversations’ with her subconscious by employing ritual and repetition. Her paintings are attempts to explore, or at least peep into, (what she calls ‘scrying’), any significant or perhaps divined message contained within.

For her, the scrying surface is a blank canvas (or panel) where imagery and meaning gradually evolve. She often makes use of ‘windows’ or portholes that the onlooker can look into, guiding to see something from within their own subconscious.

Charlotte Roseberry was born in 1989 in Sunderland. After graduating with a first class honours degree from Edinburgh College of Art in 2013 she decided to make Scotland her home and now lives and works in the Scottish Borders with her young family.

She has exhibited widely within Scotland and the UK and has paintings in many private and public collections, including the University of Edinburgh collection. She was selected for the Scottish New Contemporaries at the Royal Scottish Academy and the New Scottish Artists at the Fleming collection, London. She has won numerous awards including the Andrew Grant Bequest Scholarship & the Bothy Project Prize and has had work published in The Catlin Guide: New Artists in the UK.