The work of France-Lise McGurn gives off an immense sense of self assurance. It is so sweeping, so confident, that you can’t imagine that she ever puts a foot wrong.
She is a fêted artist who has won a lot of prizes. But for me, at any rate, the atmosphere they create is ambivalent. Are they intimate or chilly? Sensuous, perhaps as opposed to sensual? My daughter thought they were fantastic, I was not so sure.
It is almost entirely through line that she depicts her figures, who are mostly women, who leap and and straddle and bend double across the walls. Colour is used smudgily and in patches and in seemingly arbitrary fashion. It is all extremely pretty.
Certainly her work is unusual and it does not suggest many fine art sources, although there is a hint of 1930s classicism. But magazine illustration is the closest comparison. She was born in 1983 and it will be interesting to see where she goes from here.
France-Lise McGurn “Percussia’ is at the Simon Lee Gallery, 12 Berkeley Street, London W1J 8DT
