Artist Statement

The essential feature of Standing’s work is an overriding, intense interest in colour, brought to fruition through the application of opaque and translucent layers of paint employed on a variety of surfaces. She also produces mixed media work using a combination of both paint and collage. Throughout her practice Standing examines how colours converge and interrelate, her work giving rise to a rich amalgam of moods and effects drawn out from a deliberately restrained palette. Her use of colour is intuitive and playful, exploratory rather than formulaic or predetermined by a programme established in advance of the act of painting itself.

These paintings and collages are in part the reworking of sights and experiences from Standing’s extensive travels in Africa and Latin America. She also draws on her Moroccan background, and having lived there as a young child. Her source material includes landscapes and other natural forms, architecture (both interior and exterior structures), and indigenous decorative elements, all of which are utilised as a means of opening up passages into hitherto unrealised or unrecognised worlds.

Text by Peter Suchin 2008