Welcome to the website of London based fine artist Ava Reeves.

An intense fascination for psychotherapy drives an internal journey of self discovery in her artwork, focusing on self portraiture though a variety of mediums.

Her work has transformed from the figurative to surreal abstraction using painting, etching, large scale drawings and sculpture.

Biography

My practice has always focused on my own exploration into the self. I am intensely interested in psychotherapy, which has led me over the years to explore self-portraiture, finding ways of expressing and understanding my emotive life by making it tangible in some way. This ever changing subject was once quite figurative and surreal, using painting, etching, large scale drawings and sculpture.

In the last two years my internal world has enlarged to engulf the canvas, it has become a landscape, a journey.  I have begun to focus in on the drawn line. I am interested in mark making which allude to a certain state of mind; I have used various materials, including wire, cotton, lace and found objects to experiment with. My intention has been to fill the spaces, with patterns or areas of darkness to create internal landscapes that feel claustrophobic and to play with the problem of finding depth, expanse and calm within this same chaotic plane, almost as if in meditation.

“You must learn to be still in the midst of activity and to be vibrantly alive in repose.”

Indira Gandhi.

Printmaking has had a huge impact on my practice, the etching process can take a mark out of your control and give it a life of its own, the acid literally biting an experience into the very skin of the metal. Using chance and intuitive decisions I feel my way through into my own subconscious, I am giving myself permission to be a scientist to investigate these marks, to dissect, magnify and explore them……I might capture an essence, a momentary glimpse of a truth in gesture. The work in itself has begun to have a personality and an identity. The work is informing the work. One has begun to feed the other.

My influences are: Ian Mckeever, Gerhardt Richter, Wols, Eva Hesse, Louise Bourgeois, Eduardo Paolozzi, Mark Francis, Patrick Heron and Victore Passmore.