Original artwork

Edition 1 of 1 

Paint on repurposed London bus panel

63 x 40cm

Based in Mallorca, Mandy Racine’s paintings retain the glamour of a Baroque setting in a contemporary world that’s anything but glamorous. Inspired by the Old Masters, Racine manages to flip a familiar artistic language on its head by painting classical scenes in an abstract expressionist style. She is drawn to the elegant compositions, colours, and textures of 17th and 18th century art, but prefers to inject a unique attitude upon them.

A room full of her work might be confused for a national gallery taken over by punk anarchists who recently defaced its contents, wiping out the facial features of key figures. Racine’s drips and heavy brush strokes defy the clarity of a classical work, turning the allur of the ornate into an iconoclastic tangle. If the Baroque sensability relished in eccentric redundancy and dramatic wealth, Mandy’s aggressively heightened excess reminds us of the fallibility of intemperance.