Adrienne Vaughan

Adrienne Vaughan is a painter motivated by the unplumbable mysteries of her medium. Her vocabulary has its roots in surrealism and a less psychologically-freighted modernist appreciation of pictorial anomaly. The paintings in the new exhibition are crisp and pared-back. Her interest in pattern-making, that is a distinctive part of her output, is now treated in a more reductive manner.

Much depends on plain expanses of tender painterly nuance rendered in an intriguing gelato palette. Each work is a surprising essay in compression — a refined magic carpet to a sensibility where delicately calibrated balancing acts meet ineffable, out of whack configurations.

Vaughan was born in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland in 1978. She completed a Masters of Design in Painting at Unitec Te Whare Wānanga o Wairaka in 2012. Her work has been seen in group exhibitions including Painting: A Transitive Space, curated by Simon McIntyre for AUT Te Wānanga Aronui o Tāmaki Makau Rau (2016), and Necessary Distraction: A Painting Show, curated by Natasha Conland and others for Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki (2015-16). Vaughan has exhibited with Anna Miles Gallery since 2012.