The Lunatic, The Lover and The Poet
Mark Walter
I first saw Victoria Kiff’s work last autumn in an exhibition in Rye at the Ryebank gallery. Her lucid movement of the human form at once struck me as if it was constructing a language on the canvas and reminded me of the work of Georg Baselitz, well known for his figurative expressive paintings. On my recent trip to her studio in Rye, she tells me: “My preoccupation with the figure is like that of a far distance landscape of memories and transitional narratives.“ This comes across when you engage with Kiff’s work.
Kiff has always had a kinship with water and lived in Hastings for ten years before moving to Rye in 2021. She is still close to water, it now being the river Tillingham rather than the English Channel. You can see this in Kiff’s work, as the movement cascades and turns into a rectilinear distortion making you feel like you are looking through curvilinear lenses, such as a fisheye lens that dramatically bends straight lines in an image. Both are deliberate forms of distortion.
Her first interest in art and creative writing came to her at the age of five when she was encouraged to be creative while at school. Victoria tells me: “All I can remember is being in the classroom; we had easels with paper clipped at the top. The paint was plentiful, and it felt the same as when I paint now. The invention was always one of my strongest abilities. Somehow, I always know what I’d like to paint, but now it’s more challenging than ever. I’ve had many drawbacks, but this was the one thing I could do well.”
Victoria studied at Central Saint Martin’s School of Art and Design where she received a BA Honours. Her work practice has developed considerably since those days, including the different mediums she now uses – although oil paint applied to canvas is still her main go-to. Kiff now often works in mixed media on paper, and this is made through a combination of wet chalk pastel and oil on reverse using Kozo Japanese paper. This begins as a drawing, and as a colourist, she generally selects high-pigment colours. The pastel is then sealed when dry and gum Arabic is applied. Following this, she uses turpentine and synthetic resin to further enhance the drawing. Cold wax and oil paint complete the image.
Kiff’s paintings, drawings and prints often consist of a figure within a landscape, a network of complicated marks that have a vascular quality, and the layering forms a deep visual language. Kiff brings this all together in a wonderfully lucid, imaginary way and her compositions often consist of marks made from the remains of any place. Her influences include Keith Vaughan a mid-20th century British painter; Oskar Kokoschka, an early 20th-century Austrian painter; and Richard Diebenkorn, a mid- 20th-century American painter.
It is an exciting year ahead for Victoria Kiff, with exhibitions in New York, London and Brighton. Her next exhibition is at the Rogue Gallery. Victoria was approached by Ray Gange of the gallery through her website in September last year. She says: “I was intrigued by his new gallery in St Leonards. It’s a very open, ambitious, and modern gallery concept. After a meeting in December, we discussed a solo exhibition.”
The exhibition, The Lunatic, The Lover and The Poet, starts at the end of this month and will include a wide range of her work that covers all her techniques and different mediums. It promises to be a fantastic show and I highly recommend you see it.
Exhibition dates
31 March until 7 May 2023
The Rogue Gallery, 65 Norman Road, St Leonards
For more information about artist and venue visit victoriakiff.net and rogue-gallery.co.uk
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