Born: Mtarfa, Malta

Art Education:  Exeter College of Art & Design (First Class Hons)

Gail de Cordova: statement about my work

When I paint these pictures I am aware of the materiality of them; the paint, the paper, colours, textures. They come intuitively and instinctively from within. A process of letting go and opening up.

Then come all the decisions about how to get the thing right. Many layers and many changes, much work over lengths of time. Sometimes a slow and gentle building of surfaces, patiently piecing fragments together, sometimes vehemently tearing away. They carry weight and light, surface texture and illusion, a reverence for the elements, the force and the form of nature, a world of contrasts and tensions; images of time and space.

What becomes evident later is that somehow contained within these pictures is the 'spirit' or 'essence' of a place or experience. The tissue paper in particular seems, by it's rich surface texture and movement contrasting with its diaphonous and ethereal effect, to contain elements of flesh and spirit.

"Gail de Cordova works with paint and tissue. An Isabelle Allende of visual art, her images invoke ghosts, nostalgia and mysticism together with the very real power of the lands she has known, primarily Cornwall, Spain and France. Her work spans time - from a child to an adult's remembrance. Caught, released or transformed by memory, emotion, colour and form.
A language of her own that speaks to us."

Suzanne Jasileck, Suisho Gallery, 1999

"Gail de Cordova's work, glimpsed recently in Cambridge at one-day shows at Clare College, deserves much wider exposure. Her starting points are often places or fragments of buildings, suggestive of a world of legend both Celtic (she was brought up in Cornwall) and Mediterranean (she has spent a lot of time in Spain). The way she builds up her paintings, using layers of paper and paint, gives a rich and mysterious result."

Rosemary Davidson, Broughton House Gallery, 1998

"Looking at Gail’s work and SEEING it is a most wonderful experience.; and seeing it CLEARLY is poetry, music and religion, all in one... Her work is alive. I am fortunate to possess two of Gail’s paintings: ‘After Nicholson’ (2001- mixed media on canvas) and ‘Summer Breeze’ (2005- mixed media on canvas). Both mean daily replenishment. Needless to say that I am an admirer of Gail’s work."

geertje anderson MA(RCA) BIDA