Claire Cansick Norfolk, United Kingdom
I'm a painter of nature, weather and natural phenomenon using recessive colours created with a limited palette, working in Norfolk, UK.
My work is associated with a romantic pragmatism, embracing the shadow side, themes of self and non self, and a deep concern for the state of the natural world. I predominantly use oil to interpret landscapes and seascapes with a tight four colour palette, which shifts slowly over time.
Seascapes, at the moment, are my main subject; they utilise thin layers of oil, diluted with mediums, to create undulating, sensuous movement, imitating the complex facets of waves, meditative, repetitive, yet never the same. A dark depth in the foreground gives way to reflected light from brooding skies, ominous and tinged with violet, as English skies often are at dawn. These waves act as conduits for more complex ideas; skeletal forms tumble within womb like arcs, their stories unheard; faces and eyes emerge in the lustrous glossy surface; distant ships drift silently on the horizon almost merging with the sky. Myth laden shadows, tell tales of figures beyond the frame, and beyond reality. High horizons plunge into dark foregrounds, swirling and blurred, the focus in the distance, they are foreboding and threaten to engulf. Torn between light and dark, joy and fear, inner and outer worlds, they dance and swell, becoming like rock, land, grass or cloud.
Landscapes have left innocuous romanticism behind and are now concerned with core values relating to the natural world in crisis. I am drawn to extreme weather events, natural phenomenon, in paintings which veer from horrific to profoundly beautiful, belittling the viewer in their wake and power. Nature cannot be ignored, nor will fail, and I work to amplify her voice.
BA Norwich University of the Arts 1996 Member of The Arborealists 2017 - 2025 Jacksons Painting Prize Shortlist 2019 & 2024 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2022 Contemporary British Painting Prize Longlist 2023 Firstsite Solo Exhibition 2023 - 2024 The Sea The Sea Solo Exhibition Old School Gallery February 9 2024 Chappel Galleries Solo 2020 & 2023
Artwork
Welter Skelter, oil on wood, 2025, 1200
Uncontrollable Wild, oil on wood, 2025, 1200
Man Overboard, oil on wood, 2024, 1300
Unfurling Green Rainbows I, oil on wood, 2025, 700
Never Knew Love, oil on wood, 2025, 1200
Bone Soup II, oil on wood, 2025, 1200
Yet the Sea Never Overflows II, oil on gesso board, 2025, 1200
The Realm Between, oil on wood, 2025, 1200
Salt Kissed Altar, oil on wood, 2024
Wish I Was Here, oil on canvas, 2023, 8000
Haar, oil on canvas, 2023, 9000
North Sea Hydra, oil on canvas, 2023, 4000
Swallow Me Sea, oil on canvas, 2023, 3000
Siren's Vista, oil on canvas, 2023, 4000
The Sea The Sea, oil on canvas, 2023, 8000
Aphrodite Reborn, oil on canvas, 2023, 4000
Come To Me I'll Take Care Of You, oil on canvas, 2023, 7000
Sea Swallow Me, oil on canvas, 2023, 4000
Bordeaux 18.07 CDN Radio France, Oil on wood, 2022
Global Heating Report 04.08 The Guardian, Oil on wood, 2022
Shut The Windows, oil on wood, 2021
Three Boys, oil on canvas, 2020, £1500
Yang, oil on canvas, 2020, 1500
Dreaming Something Somewhere, oil on wood panel, 2021, 1800
It'll Always Belong To Them, oil on wood panel, 2021, 1800
Idai, oil on canvas, 2019, 2600
Hurricane, oil on wood panel, 2021, 600
Phreatic Eruption, oil on wood panel, 2021, 600
Cumbre Vieja, oil on wood panel, 2022, 600
Gentleness Clears The Soul, oil on canvas, 2017, 3000
The Search, oil on canvas, 2018, 900
Trespassing For Art V, oil on canvas, 2018, 1200
The Poacher's Track, Oil on canvas, 2018, 750
Backwater Dream, oil on canvas, 2018, 3000
Shepherd's Delight, Giclee on Hahnemuhle paper, 2017, £150
Beyond Silence, oil on canvas, 2020, 3000
We Look at the Same Stars, oil on canvas, 2020, https://clairecansick.com/product/we-all-look-at-the-same-stars/
Caen Meadow, oil on canvas, 2019, £900
The Paroxysm Of Stromboli, oil on wood panel, 2019, £900
Not A Drop To Drink, oil on wood panel, 2021, 1000
All Your Dreams, oil on canvas, 2021, 2500
Above Us Only Sky, oil on canvas, 2021, 3000
World Serpent drawings, charcoal on paper, 2021
Colorado 05.01 KCNC, oil on wood, 2022
Geldeston, Norfolk 08.01 Mike Page, oil on wood, 2022
Cyclone Ana,Mozambique 20.01 Pindula, oil on wood, 2022
Arctic Treeline Expansion-20.01-Morten Falch, oil on wood, 2022
Albuquerque 30.04 Eddie Moore, oil on wood, 2022
Pumarejo De Tera Spain 18.06 Cesar Manso, oil on wood, 2022
Senegal-30.03- Ngouda Dione, oil on wood, 2022
London 19.07 Sky News, oil on wood, 2022
Agartala India 18.06 Jayanta Dey, oil on wood, 2022
The Three Marks of Existence, oil on canvases, 2023, 3000
Selkie Selfie, oil on wood, 2024, 1200
Kelp Portrait, oil on wood, 2024, 700
One Thing Constant Never, oil on wood, 2024, 700
Closer to the Golden Dawn, oil on wood, 2024, 700
Scroby Sands, oil on canvas diptych, 2024
SS White Swan Shipwreck Gorleston, oil on canvas diptych, 2024, 2000
Bone Soup I, oil on wood, 2025
For The Gulls, oil on paper, 2025
Projects and exhibitions
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Can the Seas Survive Us? World of Water14/03/2025 — 03/08/2025 A World of Water brought together works by British and international artists from the last 250 years who have all offered a unique perspective of evolving marine ecosystems and oceanic habitats. Taking the North Sea and the historical relationship between Norfolk and the Netherlands as its starting point, the exhibition looked at the human... [Read more] |
Sainsbury Centre for Visual Art, Norwich | Details |
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Silent Disco 202424/08/2024 — 04/09/2024 Group exhibition of painting excellence curated by Graham Crowley, winner of the Johns Moores Painting Prize 2023 and former Painting Professor at the Royal College of Art. |
Greystone House, Wickham Market, Suffolk | Details |
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Jackson's Art Prize 202430/07/2024 — 04/08/2024 A show of shortlisted artworks, including winner Andrew Torr and my painting Wish I Was Here at Bankside Gallery, London. |
Bankside Gallery, London | Details |
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50/5021/06/2024 — 20/07/2024 50 Artists over the age of 50 exhibited in a celebration of older artists |
Unit One Gallery Workshop, London | Details |
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Summer Exhibition14/06/2024 — 19/07/2024 The first Summer Exhibition open at The Minories since its reopening in 2023. |
The Minories Gallery, Colchester | Details |
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The Sea The Sea09/02/2024 — 25/03/2024 A solo exhibition of recent seascapes. |
The Old School Gallery, Alnmouth | Details |
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Regeneration11/12/2023 — 13/01/2024 Curated by Day Bowman and Philippa Beale a group exhibition on the theme of Regeneration, where I will be showing my paintings Thinking Tree and Buzzards. The exhibition is part of Chelsea & Kensington Art Trail 2023. Ferha Farooqui | Sarah Medway | Hilary Rosen | Claire Cansick | Frank Creber | Mark Gibbs | Melisa Wadsworth | Carolyn Gowdy |... [Read more] |
Hansard Studio, London | Details |
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Firstsite : You And I Are Earth14/10/2023 — 14/04/2024 A solo exhibition of my project You And I Are Earth in which I painted reportage images for the duration of 2022 in order to collect them as an entire picture of the climate. The project resulted in 46 paintings yet I collected thousands of images which I was unable to paint. However I hope the weight of this current and future issue is somehow... [Read more] |
Firstsite Museum and Art Gallery, Colchester | Details |
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Sea And Sun08/07/2023 — 30/07/2023 Sea And Sun 8 – 30 July 2023 Chappel Galleries Colchester, Essex CO6 2DE A mixed show on the theme, curated by Edna Battye, where I will be showing three of my large sea paintings for the first time. The Sea The Sea, Haar and Come To Me I’ll Take Care Of You.I just hope they fit through the door… Includes fellow painter... [Read more] |
Chappel Galleries, Chappel, Colchester, Essex. | Details |
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The Assembly House Summer Open 202314/06/2023 — 19/06/2023 The Assembly House Summer Open 2023 14- 19 June 2023 PV 14 June 6-9pm all welcome Theatre Street Norwich NR2 1RQ I’m pleased to have been selected with my painting Dreaming Something Somewhere for the Summer Open at Assembly House in Norwich. |
Assembly House, Norwich | Details |
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East to East23/04/2023 — ongoing I’m proud to be showing new paintings and drawings from Spring to Autumn at Houghton Hall stables, expertly curated by Contemporary & Country in their new collection of Asian influenced work, East To East. The curation will run alongside a major sculpture exhibition by Sean Scully in the grounds of Houghton Hall, with paintings in the... [Read more] |
Houghton Hall, Houghton, Kings Lynn, Norfolk | Details |
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Paradise Found: New Visions of the Blackdown Hills18/03/2023 — 03/06/2023 Paradise Found: New Visions of the Blackdown Hills Thelma Hulbert Gallery, Honiton, Devon. 18 March – 3 June 2023 PV 3-5pm 18 March Exhibition exploring the Blackdown Hills through the artist’s lens past and present. Curated by Fiona McIntyre, Sandra Higgins and Tim Craven. I have painted two views at Applehayes, as seen... [Read more] |
Thelma Hulbert Gallery, Honiton, Devon | Details |
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Drawn To Mind Solo Exhibition04/02/2023 — 26/02/2023 Included were 19 framed landscape drawings from 2019-2022 of the immediate vista on my doorstep but also unfamiliar, exotic locations depicting extreme weather events. These latter drawings fed into the idea for my climate project You And I Are Earth of 2022. When drawing I have a sense of complete freedom which I don’t quite get when... [Read more] |
Chappel Galleries, Colchester | Details |
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A Sense of Place13/12/2022 — 07/01/2023 31 artists respond to the title, curated by Philippa Beale. This will be the third in a series of three exhibitions on the theme. Clive Burton | Jo Monopirio | Sandra Wroe | Margarite Horner | Nahem Shoa | Joanna Hyslop | Kerry Harding | Angela Rumble | Olivia Irvine | Lesley and Nigel Slight | Harriet Brigdale | Day Bowman | Michelle Dovey... [Read more] |
Bermondsey Project Space, London | Details |
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Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 202221/06/2022 — 21/09/2022 I have two paintings accepted for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2022, curated by Alison Wilding. My paintings Not A Drop To Drink and Shut The Windows are accepted and hopefully will make the hang. Not a Drop was painted of my beloved Kerala after some flooding in 2020. The composition was from a tv news report on the flooding of... [Read more] |
Royal Academy of Arts, London | Details |
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Tree of Life08/01/2022 — ongoing In thinking about the show at Stanton Guildhouse, I came across this quote by Goethe "All theory, dear friend, is grey," he wrote. "But the golden tree of actual life springs ever green.” In this well known quote by the German poet and philosopher J.W. Goethe (1749–1832), he is expressing a built in contradiction in our relationship with... [Read more] |
Stanton Guildhouse, Stanton | Details |
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Climate Project 202201/01/2022 — ongoing I would like to introduce you to a year long project I am about to start 2022 with a view to exhibiting it in its entirety in 2023. |
Norwich | Details |
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Trees and Woodland of Exmoor and Dartmoor01/05/2020 — 04/07/2020 A group show by The Arborealists where I showed two paintings of Exmoor's Culbone Wood and Horner Wood. |
The Museum of Somerset, Taunton | Details |
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Fake News05/03/2020 — 09/03/2020 ArtCan exhibition of works responding to the title of Fake News where I exhibited four paintings of tv news reports of climate change disasters. |
Offshoot Gallery, London | Details |
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Art Fair East 201928/11/2019 — 01/12/2019 Showed my latest paintings at this up coming art fair in Norwich 2019. |
St Anrew's Hall, Norwich | Details |
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Young Gallery Salisbury . The Arborealists02/08/2019 — 24/08/2019 Group exhibition of the Arborealists which includes my painting Backwater Dream |
Young Gallery Salisbury | Details |
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Jacksons Open Painting Prize 201908/05/2019 — 12/05/2019 The Affordable Art Fair My painting ‘Backwater Dream’ was shortlisted in the Jacksons Open Painting Prize 2019 in the top 1% of 5500 entries. Jacksons represented the painting at The Affordable Art Fair in Hampstead, London 2019. |
The Affordable Art Fair 2019, Hampstead, London | Details |
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Paint In Progress18/03/2019 — 30/03/2019 Group show of work in progress, curated by Andy Reeve. |
Anteros Arts, Norwich | Details |
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Arborealists a Collégiale Sainte-Croix de Loudun08/03/2019 — 24/04/2019 26 Arborealists exhibiting at the extensive venue in central France. |
Collégiale Sainte-Croix de Loudun, Loudun, France | Details |
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New Year Selection Chappel Galleries05/01/2019 — 24/02/2019 I was invited to submit for the New Year Selection by curators Edna and Władysław Mirecki. |
Chappel Galleries, Chappel, Essex | Details |
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Art Fair East 201829/11/2018 — 02/12/2018 Art Fair East is in Norwich and I exhibited my latest landscape paintings and drawings. |
St Andrew's Hall, Norwich | Details |
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East Anglian Arborealists01/09/2018 — 31/10/2018 Exhibition of 7 East Anglian Arborealists at the site of John Constable's The Haywain. |
Flatford Mill, East Bergholt, Suffolk | Details |
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The Arborealists21/07/2018 — 02/09/2018 Beautifully hung show which spanned all room of Black Swan Arts venue and included 40 Arborealists. |
Black Swan Arts, Frome, Somerset | Details |
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The Arborealists07/07/2018 — 04/08/2018 Group exhibition of The Arborealists including my paintings 'The Search' 'The Poachers' and 'Trespassing For Art V' |
John Davies Gallery, Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire | Details |
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Wells Maltings Trust: Connection26/06/2018 — 30/09/2018 Open submission exhibition for the opening of Wells Maltings new venue in North Norfolk. My painting 'Gentleness Clears The Soul' selected. |
Wells Maltings, Wells, Norfolk | Details |
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Halesworth Gallery Opening Show 201827/04/2018 — 16/05/2018 Three artists, one room each, open the exhibiting season at Halesworth Gallery in Suffolk. |
Halesworth Gallery, Halesworth | Details |
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ArtRooms 201720/01/2017 — 29/01/2017 Included in the National Open Art room at ArtRooms 2017 with my artwork titled Chair. |
Meliá White House, London | Details |