Clare Grill and Margaux Ogden: Things I Had No Words For

Clare Grill and Margaux Ogden both demonstrate a centrality of touch in their carefully worked surfaces. Their paintings, the compositions of which are at once found and constructed, derive power from the evidence of their making.

Grill’s softly layered paintings draw from antique embroidery and domestic textiles, creating abstract compositions that resonate with the textures of memory. Working on linen, she drags paint across the surface to reveal its weave before building delicate veils through cycles of painting, scraping, and wiping. Her forms emerge slowly as if unearthed, inviting viewers into a contemplative, intimate space.

Born out of intuitive decisions — often guided by natural occurrences like daylight or shadow falling across the surface — Grill’s paintings are documents of marks made with brush or fingers and colors added or removed. In essence, they tell the story of the artist’s process and the passage of time.

In contrast, Ogden’s paintings are vivid, architectural, and systematic. Her compositions unfold across the canvas in imperfect mirroring, evoking imagery from both the natural and built world. Subtle shifts in the works encourage viewers to engage more intensively, noticing the variations that animate her iterative, generative approach.

Using diluted acrylic washes, she creates rhythmic, freehand paintings, allowing chance and human touch to disrupt the logic of the grid. Her colors — bold, unusual, often luminous — pulse across the surface with both an optical and emotional charge.

For both Grill and Ogden, the substrate plays a crucial role, formally and compositionally. The surfaces are not arbitrary or static; rather, they serve as a tactile element integral to the final painting. Each artist’s relationship with materiality becomes a means to contemplate broader themes such as time, history, and memory. Despite their distinct techniques and visual results, both engage in a similar pursuit of sustained observation, contemplation, and response.