Background Information
While still at Glasgow School of Art, Vikki went on a two-week trip to New York. This was the turning point of her practice. The art she saw at the Metropolitan and the Museum of Modern Art inspired her. A sound and light installation by Lamont Young and Marianne Zazeela at the Mela Foundation in New York had a profound effect on her subsequent work. The installation was fused with magenta light and the musical composition was based upon mathematics. This created a humming sound upon entering that transformed into an almost out-of-body experience, similar to meditating. At this point Vikki decided that she wanted her work to have a similar effect upon the viewer.
Vikki does this by using optical effects inherent in various colour relationships, combined with an obsessive consideration of space in the canvas. Vikki uses oil paint because she loves their colour, texture and everything about them. This passion for paint and sensation can also be seen in the work of famous abstract painters such as Mark Rothko, Bridget Reilly and Frank Auerbach. As well as looking at art history, Vikki enjoys the work of her contemporaries, including artists Yayoi Kusama and Mary Heilman.
Other influences include fashion, how people decorate their bodies, the conventional idea of femininity and figures. She believes that paintings are organisms, so she studies molecular formations that give her works a cosmic feel. She also reads and watches films and makes sure she is always visually aware.
Vikki is represented by the Modern Institute in Glasgow. She makes a living from selling her work to private collectors and her work is in great demand. She doesn’t make art to make money however, and feels that if she was simply churning out art for a living without enjoying it and achieving some satisfaction, she would not do it.
Vikki had a solo exhibition at Gavin Brown’s Gallery, New York in January 2002.
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