Curiouser and Curiouser

Twisting through space, this cat seems caught between curiosity and movement, its body folding into an unexpected, almost weightless shape. Curiouser & Curiousercaptures the alert, inquisitive nature of the animal through gesture rather than detail. Lawrence’s expressive brushwork, alongside scraped and drawn marks, gives the painted surface a sense of restless energy. Set against the dark Victorian pine, the pale figure becomes both presence and trace—a fleeting encounter with a cat absorbed in its own world.

Oil paint on Victorian pine panel.

Dimensions: 24 x 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.