Stella Vine

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Strawberries for breakfast

03/07/2019 by stellavine

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03/07/2019 by stellavine

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Thumbelina

03/07/2019 by stellavine

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Eric

03/07/2019 by stellavine

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67 Recreation Road

03/07/2019 by stellavine

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Ellenor, Melissa and Alistair

03/07/2019 by stellavine

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Prozac and Private Views

03/07/2019 by stellavine

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Diana paparazzi

03/07/2019 by stellavine

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Chantelle

03/07/2019 by stellavine

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Ellenor 2nd wedding

03/07/2019 by stellavine

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Daphne – River Fowey

03/07/2019 by stellavine

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Marilyn and Arthur

03/07/2019 by stellavine

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Kurt

03/07/2019 by stellavine

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The Rumbling Kurn

03/07/2019 by stellavine

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Welcome to Alnwick fair

03/07/2019 by stellavine

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The most do your head in pink flowery wallpaper known to man

03/07/2019 by stellavine

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Jackie orange dress

03/07/2019 by stellavine

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Grace Brownstone Island

03/07/2019 by stellavine

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Edie

03/07/2019 by stellavine

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Sylvia blue cardigan

03/07/2019 by stellavine

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Geraldine…

03/07/2019 by stellavine

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Peter in prison

03/07/2019 by stellavine

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The day we went to see the whale on a beach in Northumberland

03/07/2019 by stellavine

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Ma petite flour Evangeline

03/07/2019 by stellavine

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Natalie

03/07/2019 by stellavine

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Berghain in my blood

03/07/2019 by stellavine

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William and Jean

03/07/2019 by stellavine

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I will always love you

03/07/2019 by stellavine

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Edie

03/07/2019 by stellavine

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‘Ophelia’

03/07/2018 by stellavine

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‘Elspeth enjoying the sunshine’

03/08/2016 by stellavine

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‘Little Red Riding Hood and Mr Wolf’

03/08/2016 by stellavine

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‘John and Yoko’

03/08/2014 by stellavine

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‘Charlotte, Emily and Anne’

03/08/2013 by stellavine

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‘Gladys, Ellenor, Alistair and Melissa – Alnmouth’

03/08/2012 by stellavine

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Natalie

03/08/2012 by stellavine

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'Ma petit fleur Evangeline, il est temps pour toi de monter dans les montagnes et de prendre soins des chèvres. Tout est une expèrience. Peut- ètre que nous nous reverrons un jour... Au revoir ma petite fille... et bonne chance...' 'au revoir maman c'était un plaisir de vous rencontrer, je vous aimerai pour toujours...'

One of my first Evangeline paintings, I thought at first she was going to be more like an ink drawing, but she got more colourful.

'Grace Brownstone Island', oil on canvas, 2016. The boat out to the islands from Seahouses, you get to see the lighthouses Grace lived in, it's a good trip out. I like being on boats that look like they might not make it, with the huge sea lapping up at the sides.

What the surface to be painted onto is and how that surface might behave while the painting is being made is essential in these recent works by Stella Vine and Fungai Benhura. In Stella’s paintings the wet, loaded brush touches the paper surface and as this soft impact is made it ruins it. There is a tension held in the newsprint, albeit a provisional tension of woodpulp fibres, sufficient only to carry printed news information for a day or two. But now this tension dissolves. The paper puckers; it wrinkles. Not catastrophically; the object is not threatened to collapse in on itself, but the consequence of the painter’s action causes the substrate to breathe and to stretch as it becomes wet. And then the drying comes, binding the paper inseparably with a chalky skin of paint matter. As more brushed touches bend and form the nascent geometry of soft pinks and dusty blues toward a motif, the paper keeps giving – rumpling and warping a little less each time perhaps, but it goes on. In this re-formed state, the newsprint paper substrate holds the quiet breath that its arrangements of diagonals, spirals and arching curves breathe. A dense weight of black, shot through with glimpses of solid primary hues and a churning mass of discarded stuff, give a heavy presence to Fungai’s painting and announces that a very different energy resides in each scar and rupture. The physicality and exertion of his making-action “… [as] different layers of materials on canvas and paper: leaflets, plastic, tissue paper, Indian ink, acrylic paint, beer cans and tops and more stuff”* all force the substrate to take the strain, the blows, the grindings-back. Unlike the delicacy of Stella’s wet touch onto her quiet autophagous pages, the vulnerabilities of these painting-objects’ are not like tiny breaths, held. Here they feel like great lungfuls of oxygen hastily sucked down. And this urgently imbibed air has centered and stabilised the object, scars and all. As the eyes traverse Fungai’s dense surfaces they become caught on each raw edge prompting a diving-down into each rough chasm before ascending again to skim back-and-forth hungrily across the broader scored and scorched topography.

#nadiahebson #fungaibenhura #kingsgateprojectspace #stellavine

Next show: Stella Vine & Fungai Benhura @kingsgateprojectspace 21st Sept - 19th October 2019 (Thurs - Sat). Curated by @danhowardbirt #fungaibenhura #stellavine

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