The Man in the Drawer

Candice Tripp is a South Africa born artist living in the North East of England.

At 21 her darkly humorous paintings caught the eye of a local gallery who provided the platform for her first solo show. At 22 her work was being exhibited in LA.

Child-like subjects pluck at adult themes in paintings whose narrative provide all the answers one could expect to find on single page torn from a picture book.

As a self taught painter, her ever-evolving practice now extends to include etching, sculpture, brass work and full scale installation.

She has had solo shows in London and New York, provided the award-winning artwork for Arrow Video's release of Donnie Darko and exhibited in the first inaugural Bangkok Art Biennale in 2018.

While attaining her BA in Fine Arts from the University of California in Santa Cruz, Caia was a skateboard enthusiast immersed in the punk rock scene of the ‘80s. She continues to live in Santa Cruz where the youthful vitality of a college town is an ever-present, pulsating force. Her professional career began by creating designs for skateboards and snowboards. Enchantingly beautiful female characters in her paintings are imbued with this fearless sense of defiance. As a second-generation conservationist, loving the environment and acutely aware that humanity is dangling our planet over a dangerous flame of pollution, nature is often woven into the haunting fabric of her images. Birds, flowers, plants, butterflies, animals and mythical creatures are interlaced with iconic symbols of love, mystery, soul searching and timeless values. Lurking throughout these visual fantasies are “Día de los Muertos” skulls, cute yet macabre reminders of the interlocking yin and yang of life and death.