L.L. Contemporary is delighted to present Hart on my Sleeve, a solo exhibition by British artist Charlotte Evans. Featuring 25 works, including gouache on paper and oil on canvas, the exhibition will open on September 8 and run through September 27, 2024. This show marks Evans’ first exhibition at the gallery and her debut in Canada.

A statement from the artist appears below:

“I haven’t shown in Canada before. I’ve shown abroad but not here, at home. I’ve been living here for 5 years, and it has been in that 5 years that my kids have all started school, and I have been able to make work fully again after a number of years when I had little time or space to paint. It feels like this is the last part of the equation, where my two identities, artist and mother, can finally come together completely. I’m excited my kids will get to see the exhibition. They haven’t been able to travel to my other shows. It’s important to me that they get to know all parts of me. And as the show is largely about identity and motherhood, it seems right that they be a part of it completely.

I struggled with the title of the show. I kept on changing my mind. The show borrows a lot of imagery from the tale of Actaeon and Diana from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Diana, goddess of hunting, motherhood and childbirth, turns Actaeon into a Stag after he sees her bathing naked. He is transformed. I was thinking a lot about Matrescence while making the work. Matrescence is the metamorphosis that a person goes through in becoming a parent. That side of the work is very personal. I struggled with my Matrescence for a long time. So, I finally settled on a title that I hope reflects all this. Hart on my Sleeve is a play on words. Wearing your heart on your sleeve means you don’t hide your true feelings. ‘Hart’ is the Old English word for deer. The painting that began this body of work, Stag, is a painting of a deer.”

Charlotte Evans is a British artist (b,1981, London, UK) living and working in Toronto. She studied fine art at Byam Shaw, now part of Central St. Martins, UAL in London. She left London for New York in 2011 where she worked from a studio at Brooklyn Wayfarers where she also served as an advisory board member before moving to Canada with her young family. Though still very much making work, Evans stepped back from exhibiting for a period whilst her children were very young, returning with a group show in London in November 2022, a solo with Candida Stevens Gallery in 2023, a duo show with Candida in the Spring of 2024 quickly followed by a solo show at Marrow Gallery in San Francisco. Her work is held in public and private collections around the globe including that of the UBS bank and the Imperial College Healthcare Charity Art Collection in the UK.