Christina Dobbs
London, United Kingdom
Using the camera as a sketchbook, Christina captures fleeting moments in time – everyday events that she senses have the potential to be both ordinary and extraordinary and even uncanny when re-examined through painting.
The process of making involves the creation and subtraction of layers of paint. Through this, the source material from which she works is edited and obscured adding elements of uncertainty and ambiguity to these everyday events.
Figures engage in their own activity, seemingly unaware of the viewer, and occupy a liminal space that can appear dreamlike.
The domestic setting, childhood, and scenes of leisurely summer days may be recognizable and have the potential to evoke a sense of nostalgia and even reverie in the viewer. While these scenes are familiar, they are also treated in a manner that suggests a strange and haunted undercurrent. This element of unease can destabilize our initial impression of the scene suggesting that what we know in one moment can be undone in the next.
