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Gail de Cordova: biography
Born: Mtarfa, Malta
Art Education: Exeter College of Art & Design (First Class Hons)
About Gail de Cordova:
‘Gail’s paintings leap directly from and to the unconscious. The depth of colour echoes the deepest stirrings of our souls, calling up childhood memories, dreams and those epiphanic moments when one is utterly in tune with the world. One sees more deeply under the skin of the landscape to its essence, its quintessence, and one can overlay one’s own images and memories on to the canvas, making the paintings at once universal and deeply personal.’
Hilary Painter - April 2010
"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
‘It's no wonder Gail enjoys the Cambridgeshire skies - her mixed media works are filled with a sense of natural light and she is a master at capturing its moods and our experience of it. Her works begin as responses to places and memories, particularly the frothy blues of Cornwall where she grew up and the earthy reds of Spain where she has lived.
She slowly works up a painting through layers of plaster, acrylics and oil paint, sand, pastels and paper, so the works draw attention to their surface. But while tactile their depth compels you to take a prolonged gaze into their subject. Their compositions are suggestive of places and feelings without being definable. They often depict a scene at dawn or evening - times on the cusp of things, stepping out of the everyday and inviting meditation and calm. They are spiritual and joyful.’
Fiona Scoble – ‘Local Secrets’, Cambridge, July 2009
"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