'In both the drawings and paintings there is an intuitive and immediate response to materials, incorporating chance and accident and very consciously controlled, repetitive patterning to create complex and detailed sites for contemplation. There are graphic signs and symbols that work at a percussive abstract level sitting on the surface of the work which can sometimes add a celebratory or a dark undertone. Light is the most important ingredient and revealing it by erasure, in the paintings, rather than imposing it is the method employed. There are different requirements and preoccupations in the paintings where the image is sought through rubbing back wet layers of pigment, sometimes gently and sometimes vigorously, to reveal a human presence but this is tempered by fluid washes and applied patterns sitting on the surface, weaving in and out and across the surface area. This searching for a palpable warmth (that I consider to be human) and one that encapsulates light has always been a fundamental preoccupation when painting. It is a very different concern to that of the drawings where a larger terrain of compacted, layered space is implied utilising graphic lines, collage, and sometimes additional small canvas additions, incorporating signs and symbols of boundaries, hills, islands, little bombs, tiny buildings, chequered fields, overhead threats.
The words 'elegiac anxiety' were coined by a friend, a few years ago, in relation to my work as a whole and this has reverberated and remained relevant to what I feel represents its essential nature, along with occasional moments of levity, silliness even, where tiny heads or pairs of spectacles appear at the bottom of the canvas or paper, intruding into and perhaps gently undermining or mocking the dominant theme.'
- Virginia Verran on her practice
