Mr Darcy

Mr Darcy captures the quiet intensity, physical presence & charisma of this beloved beast through expressive, gestural mark-making. Painted in a single session onto an aged Victorian pine panel, the work combines observation and memory, allowing the texture of the timber and the movement of the brush to become part of the portrait. The luminous figure emerges from the dark ground with an unmistakable sense of character, poise and independence.

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.