Clare Woods, UK

Clare Woods was elected a Royal Academician in 2022. She received a BA in Fine Art Sculpture from Bath School of Art in 1994 and an MA in Fine Art from Goldsmith’s College in 1999.

Originally trained as a sculptor, much of Woods’ work is occupied with exploring physical form in two-dimensional space. Her paintings are essentially concerned with sculpting an image in paint, and expressing the strangeness of an object.

Woods’ choice of subject matter is primarily based on an intuitive response to found photographic source material, which in recent years has moved from a fascination with subconscious expressions of anxiety in the landscape to explorations of the figure and human head, often in a metamorphic state of psychological tension. Woods is concerned with the relevance of the art of the past to contemporary practice and significant references in her work have included Paul Nash, Jean Fautrier, Barbara Hepworth and Eduardo Paolozzi. Using oil on aluminium she manipulates qualities of flatness and three-dimensionality, twisting foreground and background to create nuanced and surreal imagery that connects the viewer to subconscious states of mind.