About
The subjects of Toni Cogdell’s portraits crystallise in the midst of colour and texture’s motion, like the scattering of light across a garden.
Sarah Ryan - New Blood Art
Pulsing through paint on canvas is an action to bend chaos into beauty, the kind of beauty that tilts on the curve of a wing as it swoops into water and then sky; below, above.
A broken beauty, perfect in its imperfection.
For me, making art is a call to find an opening, a space to breathe, an acceptance of the multitude of landscapes within us and the places in the world we may belong as we arrive and depart.
I paint to remember, I paint to discover, I paint in search of things lost or not yet understood. Pieces of me, pieces of you, who we are from the inside out, moment to moment, in no linear measurement and continuously remade by experience and contact with the world around us. Can our journeys be traced or do they leave no trail other than a tug in the heart, a gentle shift toward something new.
Toni Cogdell was born in Bristol, England, in 1979. While exhibiting her work across the UK and internationally, she has honed her process and technique combining acrylic, spray paint, collage and oil paint to give voice to her expression; a personal style seeking to connect with the world around her.
“I am on a pursuit to make contemporary portraits that dig beneath the skin to swim in our consciousness, diving through our layers while throwing light at our forgotten selves; that quiet and real landscape beyond view from which stories and longings and moments can rise and be felt.
In my paintings I want to bring the outside in and the inside out; our emotional life and the world around us connecting and interacting in ways that are both personal and universal.”
“The subjects of Toni Cogdell’s portraits crystallise in the midst of colour and texture’s motion, like the scattering of light across a garden. Literary and art historical allusion situate these paintings in a continuum of artistic achievement, and they examine the solitary moment of introspection that is the beginning of all such discoveries. They emerge from – or they surge, and are suspended within – the abstract backdrop of their environment. The holistic scene is constructed by harmonising subtle tones with elements of boldly coloured, gestural brushwork; these paintings follow the terra incognita of the soul: a work in progress.”
Sarah Ryan, New Blood Art
