Statement:

I’m Mardell Rampton, and I want to help you make a space for serenity, grace, and peace.

I make paintings from cloth as a way of evoking these calming emotions in your mind and body. The blue and grey colours here in the Canadian Northwest are vividly intense on a summer day, and misty and muted during the long rainy winter. They are a natural fit to evoke these qualities in my gentle peaceful artworks. The fluid linear patterns created during the composition of the artwork create a quiet and grounding rhythm. They invite you to slow down into a relaxing and restorative tranquility.

The paintings are created from cotton cloth I dye and paint using a series of intricate processes. It begins with fixatives to help the pigment bond with the cloth. Japanese seaweed is used to thicken dye paints. Mark making tools ranging from twigs to paintbrushes create texture and movement as the dye paint is applied to the cloth. Finally the cloth rests for 24 hours while the chemical bonding of dye particles to cloth completes.

I use just one single form, the rectangle, within which to compose the work. The rigid construct of the rectangle is softened thru the use of cloth, thru the organic shaping of each ‘rectangle’ and the slow intuitive marks of the hand. Thread is applied both by machine and also stitched by hand to create varieties of texture, telling a quiet story with light and motion across the surface of the painting.

I express my gratitude to be living and working on the ancestral & unceded territories of the hən̓̓qəmin̓əm̓ and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh speaking peoples

Bio:

I’m an internationally exhibited studio artist working out of Studio Southwynde in Burnaby, Canada where I can be found surrounded by luscious textiles, walls of thread, and pots of dye.

I began exhibiting my art in 2014 at shows in France, Italy, the U.S. and Canada. To date, paintings have found their way to locations in the U.S., Australia and Canada.

For further details, please see my CV here: download CV