Tessa Coleman
- Faculty
Biography
Tessa Coleman is a painter who uses representational subject matter to explore formal spatial, tonal and colour relationships and picture geometry.
Since 2002 she has exhibited regularly at the Threadneedle Prize, the Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize, Discerning Eye Exhibitions, The RP, the New English Art Club and galleries in the UK and internationally. She won the New English Art Club's Cecil Jospe Prize in 2009, A New York Academy of Art Scholarship in 2014, and in 2010 she was elected to membership of the New English Art Club. She was awarded the New York Academy of Art Giverny Residency in 2015. Tessa studied at Heatherley’s following a Mathematics Degree and a previous career as a Japanese Fund Manager in London and Tokyo. After twelve years of independent studio practice, she did a Master's degree in Fine Art at the New York Academy of Art whilst living in New York from 2014-16.
On drawing
Observational drawing is a key part of my studio practice. It is a way of thinking out loud, of exploring and developing visual ideas that often lead on to painting. My first degree was in Pure Mathematics, so geometric organisation and the abstract and formal qualities of picture making are important to me. Inner structure and pattern are deep-rooted in my work, and the more relationships, rhythms and patterns I discover through drawing, the stronger the resulting painting normally is. That is not to say that the painting becomes merely the execution of a pre-planned drawing: one needs to be alive to the possibility of unexpected twists and turns in the development of the work that often come about when one changes medium from pencil to paint, tone to full colour.
