[Purple painting: Burgundy]

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: ; cm

The Centre Pompidou in the Beaubourg area of Paris opened to the public in February 1977. My mother went there later that year and took many photographs of the exterior of the impressive futuristic building.The photographs were accidentally developed in the wrong solution of chemicals so that the colours were not true to life but took on a new purple hue. From her studio in Chelsea, Sheila produced a series of paintings using the same colour palette as the photos that she had taken of the Pompidou building, but later the following year, after the tragic accidental death of her son Justin in Turkey, her purple palette was used again to depict a family in mourning. Sheila’s daughter Chloë, had lived in France for many years and in 1977 had bought her first home there, an old empty house in need of repair in the middle of the Burgundy countryside. Our parents travelled there regularly when work commitments allowed, and found solace in the peaceful landscape. -- Charlotte Cowlishaw 2019

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