Gallery

“Trying to describe Felice Hodges wonderful paintings with accuracy can be difficult because - like the truest art - they transcend the harsh rigidities and conformities of language. She makes paintings that may first appear wholly abstract and gestural in expression but, on continued looking, are generally rooted in a specific place or moment which their titles and forms gradually reveal. They hover between abstraction and some mysterious, transformed poetic reality that the viewer becomes immediately caught up in and a part of, and the viewer becomes part of an interaction or dialogue with the picture itself. The evocative mood and atmosphere of these paintings is often suggested by subtle, ravishing harmonies of colour. Tones and colours are laid next to, or over each other, to create highly original and unexpected chromatic combinations which are also intensely beautiful. They have a direct effect on the viewers’ emotions.  Felice trained as a musician and continues her musical interests and in this her work is reminiscent of the tone poems of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. Such music is ethereal and free flowing, intangible, yet contained within a highly effective structure. Felice’s paintings have a similar enigmatic character. The surface of these canvases is highly, richly complex, also like a musical composition.......Felice demonstrates the continued relevance and resonance of such an expressive approach to painting and perception, and it is one that enriches all who see it”.
Robert Upstone, former head of Modern British art, Tate Britain.

Felice was born in New York and came to England at the age of thirteen where she received a scholarship to the Royal College of Music in London to study the piano. She then returned to NY to study art and music at Cornell University, after which time she returned to London again - initially writing books and magazine articles on art and antiques. Her love of painting and sculpture, however, soon took over and she switched midway in her career to focus on the latter, culminating in her first solo show at Orleans House Gallery,Twickenham, in 2000. She has exhibited widely ever since, including shows in Washington DC, London, Dorset and Somerset.

Her use of vibrant colour and flowing active lines permeate much of her work.....from small intimate paintings on paper and board to large scale canvases over five feet. She uses acrylic, gouache, ink, charcoal, chalk and often collage, sourced from her library of painted scraps that she has made over many years. The essential nature of these paintings is their freedom to explore and to inspire further thoughts based on one’s own personal recollections and experiences.