Three Painters: Talks on Crivelli

In this series of talks, three Birmingham-based painters – Graham Chorlton, Claudette Holmes and Rafal Zar – bring their unique perspectives to a contemporary interpretation of Carlo Crivelli’s Renaissance paintings. They each focus on an aspect of Crivelli’s practice, including his choice of materials, spatial illusions and religious subjects. Setting up a dialogue with one of their own paintings, the artists demonstrate how an engagement with art history allows them to address current social and cultural change.

Claudette Holmes is an artist living in Handsworth. Following an MA in Art and Interdisciplinary Practice (Birmingham City University, 2016), she studied with renowned Polish icon painter Basia Mindewicz from Edinburgh School of Icon Painting at Woodbrooke Quaker Centre, Birmingham plus classes at Temenos Academy, London and Birmingham Greek Orthodox Cathedral. Holmes paints liturgical inspired iconography from a personal, social and historical perspective and her portrait of Haile Selassie, titled HIM (2020) was included in the exhibition Ikon For Artists (2021). A photographer exploring community and women’s issues since 1988, Holmes features in the film Sistren in Photography (1991) held within the Cinenova Collection.

With a focus on the devotional aspects of Carlo Crivelli’s Virgin and Child (c. 1480) , Holmes discusses the archetype in relation to her portraits of Black women, including Queen Menen, Consort and Mother of a Nation (2018), Eva Isadora, Mother. Windrush and the subsequent mental challenges that came with it (2021) and Cedella Marley Booker, Mother of Rastafari Icon Bob Marley (2022).

Other talks in the series:

Rafal Zar on The Vision of the Blessed Gabriele (ca. 1489)
Friday 13 May, 3-4pm