Painter's progress

WHEN Chloe Holt creates a painting it is more than a labour of love. For her textured, almost sculptural, canvases involve hard, physical graft too. She likes to work on the floor of her basement studio, getting down on her hands and knees to get to grips with every corner of her canvas. 

The award-winning artist, who has recently relocated from Cheshire to North Yorkshire, is installed in two rooms in the cellar of an antiques shop in a fashionable street, boasting galleries, high end boutiques and interior design shops, in the spa town of Harrogate.

As shoppers pound the bustling pavements above, Chloe is busy, beneath their feet, working on her latest project, using layers of a wet chalk primer called gesso, along with coloured oils, to both paint and sculpt her vibrant creations, all of which reflect the incredible energy she invests in her art.

Many of her pieces incorporate simple, mundane objects, such as bits of string, old pots or fragments of wood. But through her paintings, infused with feelings, memories and other connections, she transforms them into something else altogether.

Some of her more recent paintings were inspired by the Alexander Dumas novel, The Black Tulip, and feature variations of the dark purple flower, others reflect Chloe’s love of landscapes and old buildings.

The 33-year-old has built up a loyal following, with collectors including Liverpool FC’s former chief executive Rick Parry, comedian and TV presenter Griff Rhys Jones and Ian H Watkins from the band Steps.

The internationally renowned sculptor David Nash has described her as the best living British painter for her age, whose works are ‘mature beyond her years’.

But wider success has come late to Chloe who, until two years ago, still worked in commercial design, creating paintings only in her spare time, partly because she was still developing her very personal style. Although gradually and steadily building her career over these years, she confesses she probably lacked confidence.

When, more than five years ago, she was invited to exhibit in the prestigious Florence Biennale international contemporary art show, she could not afford to transport her work to Italy. But another fan, retailer and designer George Davies, came to the rescue when he flew Chloe, along with three paintings, into Florence on his private jet.

“He was a friend of Rick Parry and visited factories there all the time. I ended up on his private jet, along with his daughter, who ran Per Una. We flew straight into Florence, it was amazing,” says Chloe, who ended up being awarded the ‘Lorenzo il Magnifico’ prize at the world leading art event.

The real turning point came in 2012 when the renowned Welsh artist Maurice Cockrill came across Chloe’s work, took her under his wing, and encouraged her to apply to join the prestigious Welsh group of Royal Cambrian artists. As a result, she became one of the youngest artists ever to be elected a member.

Well established in Wales and Cheshire, Chloe is now starting to make a name for herself in North Yorkshire, a part of the country she is just beginning to get to know, ever since moving to Harrogate to live with her antique dealer partner Chris Holmes, whose business is based in the town.

Chloe has already had an exhibition in Swinton Park and has been selected to take part in North Yorkshire’s Open Studios event in June 2015.

Her hands, hair, face and clothes marked with vibrant splashes of paint, Chloe breaks away from the canvas she is working on, next to the huge Victorian cast iron range in her studio, to talk about her work.

She is surrounded by images and items which inspire her. A noticeboard is covered in photographs and drawings, including impressions of the surfaces of walls and doors or pots and jugs which have caught her eye.

“I focus on memories of places, objects that have a history or a story,” she explains. “It’s about a fleeting glimpse, an impression, rather than painting exactly what I see.”

Concerned with composition, decomposition, colour and form, her tables and shelves are covered with what, to the untrained eye, looks like a disorderly looking collection of pots and paints, chunky bars of oil paint and tubs of whiting powder and glue.

Having once worked in acrylics, she now uses old, historical methods on ply board: “I bind whiting, or chalk-like powder, with glue and water and sculpt it while wet,” she explains. She sands the work down after building up layers, drawing into and lacerating the surface with sticks or a palette knife, then painting with oil on top: “It’s a very energetic process,” she says.

“It dries really hard like stone, so it’s quite porous and a more lasting medium to work on. It creates beautiful surfaces, and a depth to the work, which is almost like a fresco.”

Stacks of old, distressed plaster, gilt and wooden frames, which Chloe uses to present her work, almost fill one of the rooms. Many of them are early English, but some have come from Irish country houses, others from France: “I leave them, bashed up, as they are, that way they speak of the value of the past, of memories and connections,” she says.

Chloe, who was brought up in Chester, near the Welsh border, only began to develop her distinctive abstract painting style, which is constantly evolving, in more recent years.

The daughter of two graphic designers, she studied textile design at Manchester’s Metropolitan University at a time when most students were starting to use computers in art: “I was always very hands on, I loved drawing and painting and learnt all the traditional processes because I wanted to explore the craft.”

Never afraid to experiment, she once created a wall hanging out of seaweed woven across flotsam and jetsam: “It looked beautiful, but it smelt bad. I nearly failed my second year because of it,” she laughs.

In her third year, she was awarded a first class degree with distinction and won the Royal Society of Arts and Commerce drapers’ design prize.

Her final catwalk collection was composed of simple shapes created from silks and wools printed with her own paintings and her work was commissioned by Oliver Heath for the Changing Rooms BBC TV show..

Having won a place to study textile design at the Royal College of Art but unsure what direction her career should take, she decided to return home to Chester instead.

While working in design, she set up a studio in the garden of her parents’ home and experimented with painting, using mixed media, gouache, acryrlic, emulsion and waxes: “I drifted into producing my own work, but it wasn’t an easy ride,” she says.

Bring forced to stop painting for a year after breaking her hand skiing in 2006 made her realise that this was what she really wanted to do: “It took me a couple of years to get full movement back and after that I was determined to carry on painting.”

But it remained a part-time pursuit up until about two years ago: “I was much less focussed up until the age of about 31. But my ten year hiatus probably made me feel much more passionate about and appreciative of what I had missed,” she says. “It also gave me the time I needed to find my way and work out what really mattered.”

Chloe’s big break came just at the right time, when she met the acclaimed artist Maurice Cockrill, then Keeper of the Royal Academy Schools, while he was painting on the seafront in Conwy, on the Welsh coast two years ago: “He agreed to look at my work and said it was fantastic,” says Chloe.

Having Cockrill as her mentor gave her the confidence to apply to become a Royal Cambrian, one of about 100 distinguished artists elected by their peers to become members of the prestigious Welsh Academy.

Usually, artists have created a large body of work and it takes many years to become a member: “That was a big confidence boost for me,” she says.

As a result, she was offered four Academy exhibitions a year: “It really put me on the map,” she says.

She went on to win the highly sought after Kyffin Williams Drawing Prize, named after the famous Welsh artist, with her sketch of a wicker basket filled with coconut seed pods, created on a piece of dyed, screwed up and stretched parchment.

“It felt like a fragment of something experimental, with rough surfaces and raw edges. The object was simple and banal, but connected with Wales and the wider world.”

Chloe had exhibited widely in Wales, including at the renowned Ffin y Parc gallery in Snowdonia, but this prize winning drawing led to her being represented by a top London gallery too, which opened her work to a whole new audience.

Chloe’s works now sell from around £380 for a small 10x10cm painting from her last exhibition, inspired by lemons and pots from Puglia in Italy, to more than £3,000 for larger items, such as the 129x96cm canvas, titled ‘Conserving Sunshine (Puglia), which she is working on today.

Having made the move from Chester to North Yorkshire over several months, she has now reached the point, she says, where this part of the country has begun to feel like home.

And it is a part of the world that she is yearning to explore and paint: “Harrogate is a beautiful place, surrounded by so much culture. And I am dying to go to Whitby, the landscape is so full of energy.”

Having built her reputation over time, she has learnt the true value of her work: “I am finally on people’s radar. And I realise that I could never have another job, it has got to be art, nothing else, now.”

*For further information, visit www.chloeholt.co.uk

*Chloe's work will be featured in the North Yorkshire Open Studios event, from June 6 to 7 and 13 to 14. W: www.nyos.org.uk