Biddy Hodgkinson

Brought up in the 1960s on a farm in England, Biddy Hodgkinson was constantly observing life and death cycles. In mid-life, Hodgkinson attended Chelsea College of Art where she developed her true love of colour and painting, graduating in Fine Art (BA Hons).

Inspiration for her work comes from close observations of lifecycles and a fascination for the beauty and luminosity in decay. Through painterly and alchemic techniques, she interprets the violent intensity and beautiful imagery we see in natural decay and mould by using harmful agents, such as acids, to erase and bleach away large swathes of colours, showing them in the context of their own negation as they would be in nature. She creates intriguing, sculptural and tactile surfaces on the canvas. As Wallace Stevens wrote, "death is the mother of beauty".