The artist’s work explores the differences between tangible places and abstract spaces

Karen Loader’s artistic process begins with a place – she walks around it, photographing, noting architectural shapes, textures and juxtapositions of colour.

For her latest exhibition Altered States, she explored her own Holloway neighbourhood where she has lived for more than 25 years, roaming the back streets and alleyways off the A1 up to Highgate.

Back in the studio, she works her subjective observations into drawings that play with space and colour.

Finally, they are scaled up into larger abstract works that she hopes capture the mood and atmosphere of the original location, and which might trigger memories or associations in the viewer.

She often works within the rigid parameters of a grid – believing that it allows for infinite possibilities to explore space and objects. But she is always seeking the chinks where the mathematical harmony is disrupted – using layers of acrylic colour to create both the harmony and disruption of space.

Ultimately Loader is probing the differences and similarities between place and space – place as somewhere tangible that can be experienced through the senses, and space as something abstract that’s felt rather than observed.

Altered States runs from April 28 until May 11 at Highgate Gallery at the Highgate Literary and Scientific Institution in South Grove, Highgate. hlsi.net