For Weaver, the body is not just a subject but a site – a stage on which line is choreographed in lyrical gestures, and through which emotion comes to the fore. Despite their monumental scale, Weaver’s new works disclose humble subjects and tender sentiments.
In her latest series of large square-format canvases, Weaver turns to the motive of the mother and the nude. Mothers pose in enveloping embraces: swaying, kneeling, or cradling children in their laps. Alongside these, several paintings feature solitary female figures in bowing stances reminiscent of Eve or Aphrodite, attempting to shield their nude bodies from the viewer’s gaze. By contrast, the mother and child paintings propose a triangularity of gazes: at times either mother or child stares outward, at others they remain locked in one another’s gaze.
Elongated, curving necks recall the postures of Weaver’s Flowers series (2024). As in this earlier body of work, Weaver’s central motif is recognisable, and yet drifts towards abstraction; limbs taper into space, and abbreviated lines merely suggest garments or contours. Whether in flowers or figures, Weaver’s primary subject seems to be posture itself, used as a means to convey subtleties of mood.
In her paintings and drawings, the artist investigates the mundanities of modernity. Across various mediums, and often at massive scale, Weaver’s work at once confronts and relates to the viewer. Her compositions are made with a consciousness for the procedure of painting itself: whether in watercolour, oil or acrylic, she develops a unique choreography of chroma and brushwork, resulting in works that disclose an all-over, wet-into-wet, coming together of the surface.
Weaver’s work also abounds with art historical and literary references – from Henri Matisse to Georg Baselitz, Marcel Proust to Robert Walser. Her recent ‘Flower Paintings’ are pared-back compositions of line and shape, harmonising transparent layers with energetic mark-making. Whether upright, drooping, or entwined, the flowers seem to suggest a complex spectrum of emotion. As in all of Weaver’s work, they propose the act of painting as one of both performance and introspection.
GRACE WEAVER Plaids Through 28 May 2026 MAX HETZLER GALLERY LONDON, UK
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