Known for her large-scale abstracts, made up of flawlessly gradating shades, Saville is interested in the cultural mimetic image through painting and its relationship with our emotional landscape.
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Oscillating between working mediums, the figurative and the colour field, these two worlds exist equally. Through these seemingly different approaches, she finds a common thread as she alternates the abstract and figurative ideas to discuss the symbolic order within a framework of abstraction. Saville says:
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“I am interested in painting as a way to explore contradictions. An image of a nest could be a metaphor for potential, the home of new ideas, but it could also suggest sadness and the loss of something innocent."
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The figurative paintings, usually created in series and all retrieved from long internet searches, are as much about pathos as they are detachment. Saville is also known for her intricate drawings; her most recent of which is a departure from the found image, drawing everyday objects she has in her studio.
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The colour fields, however, describe a purely emotional relationship, working intuitively to produce resounding depths and tones of colours in layer upon layer of oil paint. Sometimes dizzying, and with no trace of the artist’s hand, their surfaces suggest atoms or an atmosphere in flux. Removing this trope of painterly gesture, Saville is interested in how the viewer projects themselves onto the work.
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​In more recent years these paintings have evolved, with colour moving in hypnotic horizontal bands, each individual work titled after important women in Saville's life. In her 2023 exhibition ‘Her’ they were juxtaposed with paintings of famous women. Together they question the way we perceive and respond to images of women.
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Saville’s work is intensely personal, drawing on her experiences. Her solo show 'Ma' 2022 explored the artist’s personal journey of childlessness, each painting titled after the names she would have called her children.
“These paintings were made and developed through connection. Connection with the women in my life but also with myself. They are about friendship. I hope that people feel happy when they see them, the way I do every day at the studio.”
August 2024