Connor Charlesworth & Leah Hodge, Soft Step

Sat. May 26th 2018 - Sat. June 16th 2018
soft step

Connor Charlesworth
Leah Hodge

Biography:

Connor Charlesworth is visual artist currently based in Victoria, BC, and originally from Kelowna, BC. Connor received his MFA from the University of Victoria (2018) and his BFA from the University of British Columbia in Kelowna, BC (2015). He has exhibited in group and solo exhibitions in Canada and exhibited in student exhibitions abroad.

Leah Hodge is a visual artist currently based in Victoria, BC, and originally from Vancouver. Leah is in her final year of completing her BFA from the University of Victoria (2019). She has exhibited in group exhibitions in Canada

Statement:

Soft Step, is one in a series of collaborative paintings in which we simultaneously paint on the same work together. For the most part, we enter in to the work without making a plan or study and rather react to the actions and gestures made by the other person.

In the process of making each work, we keep some rules for consistency. We do not verbally communicate; we rather communicate through the gestures, marks, erasures, blurrifications, splatters, stains, scrapes, and scumbles recorded through the act of painting. Our collaborative works inherently deal with themes of control/ loss of control, communication, language, abstraction, kinship, and play. There is a respectful, performative aspect to the work in which we have to both submit to each others actions, yet also mindfully challenge them. The decision to re-work, or preserve marks and forms becomes something learned as we observe each others actions and begin to acquire each others visual vocabulary.

Tread lightly
Tip Toe
Soft night
Keep it slow

Like a cushion
Penny
Don’t slip
Said she