Bella

Bella explores the quiet concentration and instinctive physicality of this beloved darling at rest. The curled, compact form is built through layers of expressive brushwork, with fine incised marks tracing the direction and texture of the fur. Painted in a single session onto a Victorian pine panel, the work brings together observation, memory and gesture, allowing the character of the cat to emerge through the immediacy of the painted mark.

Oil paint on Victorian pine panel.

Dimensions: 24 × 49.5 cm.

Vanessa Lawrence’s Cats series explores the energy, presence and instinctive physicality of cats she has known, observed and lived alongside. Drawing on observation and memory, the paintings capture the charged physical language of an animal always alert to its surroundings. Lawrence’s wider practice is rooted in drawing from performance. Here, that attention to movement turns to the domestic world of the cat. Painted in oil directly onto Victorian pine door panels, the works evoke the homes and thresholds cats inhabit. Brushed, scraped and scratched in a single session, the surfaces retain the immediacy and vitality of the encounter, creating traces of movement, presence and memory. Lawrence is a postgraduate alumna of the University of Brighton and the Royal Drawing School, London. Her work is held in private and public collections, including Glyndebourne Opera House, Sussex.