Imogen Harvey-Lewis

'You don’t have to say "I love you" to show that you mean it.'

A prolific and enthused artist, passionate about her drawings and to the process of creating them, Imogen’s work is modern and articulate. It is illustrative. It is both confident and heartfelt.

Graduating from DeMontford University, Leicester, with a first class honors degree in Art History, Imogen first set to work at Impressions Gallery, a contemporary photographic gallery in York. Moving to Gloucestershire in1996, Imogen apprenticed to a stained glass studio working at Gloucester Cathedral and Woodchester Mansion. Soon after Imogen established herself as a successful free-lanced stained glass artist.

Drawing on her design skills, Imogen’s illustrative art today is a direct development from her daily use of sketch books, where the emphasis is on quick line drawings to capture a feeling, a glance, an interaction. Her figures are paired down and abstracted to the minimum. The images often use text to emphasis a sentiment.

"My pictures over the last few years are sequential. They stem from a life-changing turning point in my life when my late husband died suddenly, which left me bereft but with a passion to draw - for real. To put down what I felt, for me. My style is born of that immediate need to record a thought, a look, an inspiration, a question. Three years on, my work has developed to be less of the me and more of the everyone"

In my work I am not afraid to tackle issues but I prefer to do so in a sideways manner. My work aims to appeal to its audience by reflecting back their own underlying feelings about some of the bigger issues in life. In my drawings I try to capture the bits in between that which is obvious. You don’t have to say "I love you" to show that you mean it. The immense vocabulary of body language and expression can say it all. My drawings depict human nature abstracted from the specific of "that’s you and that’s me’, and re-presented with a generic relevance to us all."

For more information visit www.imogenharveylewis.com