Dancing under Chandeliers: Works by Christine Seiterle & Pip Dickens

The figurative subject of the chandelier is only the starting point for the two artists. Seiterle’s subjects are the multitude of citizens who inhabit the world of her paintings, staged in their everyday life, removed from a specific time and place. The focus is reduced to the essential, and reality is presented to us only through the attitude and movements of blurred-face characters. Her chandeliers, dominating the scene in size compared to the minute dancers, who become one with the environment and set the mood for the scene, through a careful combination of tones.

Pip Dickens’ series began from paintings and sketches of chandeliers and developed into allegorical works. She is no stranger to using concepts of illusion and double meaning, and often pairs traditional techniques to more innovative methods, using layers and contrasting surfaces in her paintings.

If in the works by Seiterle the atmosphere is still serene, like a quiet and reliable Swiss town, Dickens presents instead a dark phantasmagoria of eerie medusas, foreboding emblems looking back at us behind the gleaming crystals. The chandeliers transcend their purpose and become animated, each embodying a unique character.

Born in 1969 in Schaffhausen in Switzerland, Christine Seiterle studied design, painting and drawing in different European countries (Germany, Austria and Switzerland). Painter and illustrator since 1990, she lives and works between Switzerland and Paris. Today her artworks are presented in public institutions as the municipal museum of Schaffhausen and the Allerheiligen museum which hosted in 2019 her exhibition ZeitRäume and published the catalogue with the same name.

Pip Dickens was born in Fiskerton-cum-Morton, Nottinghamshire, UK, in 1962, and studied at the Slade School of Fine Art (UCL), graduating in 2000 with a master's degree in Fine Art Painting. Since that time, she has been an independent professional artist and since 2013, she is Lecturer in Painting at Lancaster University. Dickens was shortlisted for the NatWest Art Prize in 1997 and was the recipient of the Jeremy Cubitt Prize (Slade School of Fine Art). She also won the Edna Lumb Art Travel Prize in 1995. She was Leverhulme Trust Award Artist in Residence (2010-2011) undertaking research in Kyoto, Japan. Over the last 14 years, Dickens had numerous solo exhibitions in the UK and in the USA. Her work is held in various international public and private collections.