Paula Sanders

Sheila Vollmer

With Colour + Space, Paula Sanders shares a group of oil paintings made over the last 12 months, along with smaller works on paper dating from 2020.

With more time spent at home in her studio, Sanders became attuned to different aspects of the domestic environment. Sometimes, just sitting quietly, something will pop into focus and present itself as a potential subject, following a particular set of colours, shapes, or spaces.

Sanders responds to “what’s there” as a personal record of how we live, rather than setting out to formally arrange a group of objects. In this, she endeavours to hold on to something that has resonated in some way, whether personal, emotional, funny, or revealing - and enjoys the anticipation of recording it before that something changes.

For this exhibition, Sanders’ oil paintings will be accompanied by sculptures in steel, perspex, wax, and more by Canadian sculptor Sheila Vollmer.

Building her forms musically in space, Vollmer’s abstract studies of architectural structures and natural systems of growth can’t help but transmit a delicate sense of familiarity that perfectly complements Sanders’ nostalgia for the present.

Artist biographies

Paula Sanders

Paula Sanders is a painter and art tutor living and working in Blackheath. In the past couple of years, she has returned to a more regular painting practice following a long career as an art teacher.

Born in Bristol in 1962, and spending several years in Wales, Sanders gained her Fine Art degree in painting at Birmingham Polytechnic in 1984. After living in London for two years, she continued her studies with a postgraduate year at the Cyprus School of Art in Lemba, Paphos.

It was in Cyprus that Sanders began, with the encouragement of artist and tutor Tom Watt, to work directly from her surroundings using oil paint on board. She has retained this practice, enjoying the urgency to capture the essence of time and place.

Whilst her paintings during the 80s and 90s were typically made en plein air in various locations around the UK and further afield, interior spaces, observed or remembered, have also provided compelling subjects, with the painter Winifred Nicholson a long-time favourite.

“My interest lies in exploring my everyday surroundings where familiar spaces, a window view, the sleeping dog, and various treasured objects, seen in incidental and surprising arrangements, all become compelling subjects for painting.

Colour is key to the work and often sparks an idea and a desire to get something down quickly. My aim is that these visual responses ring true and capture my initial excitement.”

- Paula Sanders

Sheila Vollmer

Canadian-born, London-based Sheila Vollmer completed her post-graduate studies in Sculpture at St. Martin’s School of Art, London, 1988, and BA Honors Art, University of Guelph, Canada, 1985. She was Sculpture Program Manager at Morley College London (2003-2025) and has been an APT Studio member since its inception in 1995.

Whether through architectural, poetic, or organic references, Vollmer expresses her experience of space and energy responding directly to the materials. Her sculptures vary in scope, from hand-sized items to installations and larger outdoor works.

Vollmer has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally.

Highlights include: ‘Sine Line’, Public Sculpture Commission, Milton Keynes 2020; Chelsea Flower Show 2018 - VTB Garden; Artist of the Day, Flowers Gallery Central, London; Sheila Vollmer, The Atrium Gallery, Cooper’s & Lybrand, London; Cass Sculpture Foundation; and Thinking Big: 21st Cent. British Sculpture, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice.

“I construct my sculpture in a modular rhythm of replicated and changing units, both opening and containing space, searching to express the inside/outside pull of energy and emotion.

Added colour accentuates a visual ‘beat and flow’ that leads the viewer in, out, and around the work. Colour is not an afterthought and is often a mood in my mind as I make the work.”

- Sheila Vollmer

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