Essay Cloud 9 New Directions in Contemporary Painting

“Depicting desirable handbags that are containers for all kinds of human vice or virtue, Marie Le Lievre’s recent body of work delves into the meaning of Baggage - its psychological undertow and it’s literal manifestation. Bordering on both the fashionable and the contrary, the bags, with their alchemical swathes of saturated oil paint, seemingly morph on the canvas in a spontaneous act of declaration. Like shifting clouds in which the eye perceives recognisable shapes (pareidolia), Le Lievre imbues each of her bags with intense character. These emotional colour fields tackle the baggage of painting traditions, consumer impulses and the mutability of personal circumstances.”