BA Fine Art student winner in Freelands Painting Prize 2021

Third year BA (Hons) Fine Art student Rebecca Foster-Clarke is one of ten winners of the Freelands Painting Prize 2021.  The Freelands Painting Prize was launched in 2020 by the Freelands Foundation, and celebrates outstanding painting practice at undergraduate level. 

All submissions are reviewed anonymously by a judging panel who this year selected ten winners to take part in an exhibition at the Freelands Foundation gallery. The exhibition is accompanied by a publication.

Rebecca is in her final year of the four year BA (Hons) Fine Art course. Her figurative paintings explore western society’s detachment from the natural world, and her inspirations stem from old master portraiture, still life painting, popular culture and social media. She usually works in the mediums of oils and acrylic painting, collage and film. 

She comments of her piece Supper, “In this painting I use painting history to make work relating to the oddness of interior space and the world beyond. The painting’s inspiration comes from the idea of the overindulgence of home comforts; we have become too comfortable with our domestic surroundings.

This work recreates the banality of the room and reinvents it in a surreal manner. The motifs in this painting key symbols relating to the body, the desire to bring elements of nature into the room and not least, the extraordinary colour of a blue sky beyond the window frame.”

See more of Rebecca’s work on her Instagram.