About Lottie
“Cole’s paintings are devoted to a remarkable presence of absence. The London streets she has painted, the rooms at Charleston, the Marylebone shops, the imaginary interiors of the collectors of real paintings and sculpture –with their massively empty chairs – all shout out with a human presence that is not there. Even her rooftops show empty ladders, as if they were an obstacle course for acrobats. These interiors are well-used, reeking of a lifetime of touching and placing, of someone looking fondly at the paintings-within-a-painting. But everyone has now left, and they are anyway a bit old-fashioned in design, as if in looking at her rooms we were returning to a house some time after its owners had moved on.
But this mourning of absence is overwhelmed by the loving colour. There are many colours still to be invented, just in the gaps between those already created from artist’s pigments, and Cole possesses an evidently instinctive visual skill in finding those slightly culinary shades of pleasure. And her feeling for space and light fills up the rich patterns of her inventions, as if they were all really there before our eyes. One of her paintings on a wall of our own house would point to a revived space from the past, containing the works of art, which like hers, reward with their infinite life.”
- David Fraser Jenkins, Curator
Magnum Opus I, watercolour and gouache, 2024_36x26 cm
Magnum Opus II, watercolour and gouache, 2024_36x26 cm
Magnum Opus III, watercolour and gouache, 2024_36x26 cm
Magnum Opus IV, watercolour and gouache, 2024_36x26 cm
Cole's paintings reflect her interest in Art History, provenance and the role women have played in both. She regularly looks to women artists & collectors of the past for affirmation, guidance and inspiration. She paints homes, not least because they are a realm of women, an area unlike most others where they are authored by women. Though people are rarely seen inside in her paintings, she believes the domestic interior contains considerable biography & human emotion from grief to celebration seen through the objects on the mantlepiece or the paintings on the wall.
The Eileen Gray Chair Series looked at Gray’s work as a furniture designer and then paired her chairs either with other artists admired or symbols which echo themes of motherhood and fertility.
Her recent series of paintings of people place the subjects outside of the context of rooms and explore close familial relationships - motherhood, daughterhood and sibling relationships.
While there is an obvious preoccupation with content in the pictures focus is given to the emotional & poetical impact of colour and physicality of paint.
Cole works equally in oils as well as gouache & watercolour as they convey light and mass so readily.
Available paintings can be viewed at Long and Ryle just by Tate Britain.
In 2021 she was elected an Associate Member of the Royal Watercolour Society.
CV & Exhibitions
2024 Solo Show A Commonplace Collection of Paintings - Long & Ryle
Group Show - Transparency - Lyndsey Ingram Gallery
London Art Fair, LOPF, British Art Fair with Long & Ryle
Group Show - RWS at 220 years
Group Show - Guildford House Open
2023 London Art Fair, British Art Fair, LOPF with Long & Ryle
Modern British Art & Sussex Artists - Group Show
RWS Now - RWS Gallery Whitcomb Street
Winter Group Show - Linden Hall Studio
2022 Solo Show Home of the Paleoethnobotanist & Other Stories - Long & Ryle
Winter Group Show - Linden Hall Studio
London Art Fair, British Art Fair, LOPF with Long & Ryle
2021 Elected Associate of the Royal Watercolour Society
Gallery Artist - Long & Ryle
ING Discerning Eye
London Art Fair with Long & Ryle
2020 ING Discerning Eye
Sunday Times Watercolour Competition
Royal Watercolour Society Contemporary Watercolour Competition
2019 Selection of Work at Ainscough Gallery and Cricket Fine Art London & Hungerford, McAllister Thomas Godalming
One the Square at Zimmer Stewart, Arundel
The Sunday Times Watercolour Competition Exhibition & Tour
Royal Watercolour Society Contemporary Watercolour Competition
2018 One the Square showcase, Forest Row, RH18
The Sunday Times Watercolour Competition Exhibition & Tour
'The Tetrarch & Other Stories' Cricket Fine Art
'Recalled: Poetry & The London Library' London Review of Books Cafe
2017 Solo Show: Living with Art - Collectors' Interiors Cricket Fine Art
2016-7 Potterton Books, Lower Sloane Street, SW1
2013 Lamb Chambers, Middle Temple
2013 Solo Show, Bloomsbury Interiors Cricket Fine Art, Park Walk
2011 The Studio Gallery, Midhurst - Christmas Show
2011 Cricket Fine Art - Gallery Artist
2011 Moncrieff Bray Gallery - Autumn Show
2010 Moncrieff Bray Gallery – Solo Show A London Life & A Sussex Summer
2010 Thompson’s Gallery Marylebone – Summer Exhibition
2009 National Art Open – Group Exhibition
2009 Thompson’s Gallery Marylebone – Summer Exhibition
2007 Thompson’s Gallery Marylebone – Group Exhibition
2005 Josephine Mews Fine Art – Solo Show