What does it mean to seek one’s inner-self?

 

Is the answer a bid to know yourself completely, embracing all flaws and strengths? Is it the quest to understand one’s spirituality, or essence of being?

 

That’s the question artists Canal Jagerroos and Christophe Lenoble have considered for their joint exhibition at Tokarska Gallery in Walthamstow.

Canal, brought up in an artistic family in Macau, describes herself as a painter with roots in Chinese traditional painting.

Indeed, at a time when other children her age were picking up crayons, Canal was learning traditional Chinese ink brush painting.

As such, her work tends to have strong roots in Chinese culture.

“In one way I believe a painting should not have boundaries or nationalities, but in another I find it bizarre because painting is always the image of its own environment; it reflects the artist’s culture, the artist’s past and the artist’s present,“ she explains.

“But most of my works are inspired by Chinese ancient philosophy, poems and literature.“
Inspired also by nature and seasons, she has won international recognition for her unique motifs of blending ancient and new elements.

Another major factor that has left a strong mark on Canal’s work is the experience of having lived in numerous different countries in the last 15 years.

Consciously and subconsciously, she admits, cultural experiences from the Orient to Europe, Africa and Scandinavia have impacted upon her latest works.

Painting on multiple layers of rice paper with acrylic, ink and Chinese pigment, she then incorporates these together to create a sense of depth on canvas.

Meanwhile French artist Christophe has created a series of graphic works out of mixed media.

“I photograph tiny and insignificant subjects to be able to see them and to show them as monuments,“ he explains. “I’m interested in things that are intended to be covered as quickly as possible, such as the intermediate states of town planning. I look for the play of time on men’s works that attempt to stop time.

“I seek traces of entropy for their strange and ignored beauty.

“All of this is created by chance, at random places where I manage to get lost, which is not a small matter nowadays.

“I limp between held and distended support points: the sublime and the pointless; the eternity and the immediate; the sense and the indecency; the passion and the disgust.“

Seeking for Inner-Self is at Tokarska Gallery, Forest Road, Walthamstow, from Thursday, April 4. Details: 020 8531 5419 or ww.tokarskagallery.co.uk