About Chérie
Born the eldest of 8 children into a noisy and often chaotic household, Cherie’s future seemed pre destined to work in the family business, but she held a deep seated desire to go to Art College.
Having followed her destiny, she eventually broke away and became a teacher before finally pursuing her long held childhood dream of becoming an artist in retirement.
“When I retired I enrolled on a full time art course at West Dean College and I have never looked back.”
Chérie in her own words…
I paint and make abstract pieces. I work intuitively, responding to found objects, assembling and combining these with things I have created. I work quite quickly and try to reflect the energy and joy in all my pieces. I often assemble and exploit happy accidents in my sculpture.
I find it exciting to use a wide variety of mediums and love to explore and allow each medium to feed into the next, creating installations and bodies of work.
“We had the pleasure of exhibiting two works by Chérie in our winter show. Her instinctive and vibrant abstract paintings were well received by our patrons and Chérie was very professional to deal with.”
— Adam's Gallery, Reigate, Surrey
Chérie’s mediums…
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Chérie works in series and selects a small range of colours to get started. She often warms up with mark making on paper and then, working quickly, adds marks and areas of colour across multiple surfaces at once. Working intuitively, responding to each mark and area of colour as she works, after evaluating areas that feel successful and those which are unresolved, she will add or subtract, making further marks using oil paint, crayons, pens and collage, until each piece has its own voice.
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Chérie considers each sculpture first from the perspective of materiality. Sometimes a strong idea will present itself but essentially she works intuitively, led by chance and happy accident in order to move the work forward.
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Chérie tends to work across multiple mediums at one time, transitioning between paint and sculpture into animation or video and performance.
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Chérie primarily creates mono-prints, as she enjoys the challenge of creating something different every time. Sometimes she will add drypoint, to introduce a bit more control as a second stage of the piece.