Charlotte Sorapure

Trained at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, Charlotte Sorapura is a figurative Artist living and working in Bath. She has had solo exhibitions with Messum's in London, and Brian Sinfield Gallery in Burford as well as The Quest Gallery and the Victoria Art Gallery, both in Bath, She has been awarded several prizes, including the Cecil Jospe prize at the New English Art Club and the Odin prize at The Royal West of England Academy. As a result of winning the 2012 Holburne Portrait Prize, she was commissioned to paint a portrait of the war photographer Don McCullin for the Holburne Museum's permanent collection.

Charlotte has also exhibited in the USA and the Toronto Art fair in Canada.

I was lucky enough to attend the Royal Academy schools at a time when drawing still underpinned all the disciplines, and the appreciation of the need to visually organise an image, was paramount. Drawing was seen as a means of exploring the nature of visual relationships and their underlying patterns and structures, rather than merely a 'skill'.

The significance of this is that the viewer sees the design of an image before becoming aware of its content. For me, the best paintings are those that have strong visual impact compositionally, with an awareness of all the patterns and rhythms that come out of drawing, combined with subtlety and mystery.

These overriding concerns link the diverse range of subject matter in the work, from the observed still lives, portraits and landscapes to the more imaginary themes.

There is, I hope, a gently irony, humour and poignancy in these paintings, that life is not always what it seems. Sometimes the recognition of these fleeting, incidental and silent moments have the ability to resonate more powerfully than much grander events and gestures