OC/BC Arts is the studio of Octavia Charlesworth, a multidisciplinary artist born in London but now living and creating from studios based at opposite ends of the UK: Scotland and the South West Cornish coast.
Artist. Classicist. Creatrix.
After finishing a Masters degree in Classics from the University of Oxford, this driving passion for the ancient cultures of Greece and Rome, in particular the mythology and epic literature, flourished out of the academic and into the artistic sphere. The self taught artist now unites these two disciplines to create a style of artwork that holds a mirror to the past and the present.
The artist’s purpose is to inspire, from the Latin inspirare (‘to breath into’), whether it is by channelling the spirit into a creation, or between the creation and the beholder.
Every artwork has a story, whether it is one revived and reinterpreted or yet to be written. OC/BC Arts weaves a narrative through a range of media, from fine art and mixed media paintings to highly sculptural ceramics, interlaced with threads from poems or fragments of ancient wisdom and presented with a theatrical flare that is carefully staged to draw the viewer into the timeless tales that the art evokes. OC/BC Arts transmutes ancient material so that the inquisitive viewer reconsiders both past and present from a novel perspective, and sees how history, humanity and art are intrinsically bound together.
The current themes of the art are centred around the state of a liminal existence and the rupturing of boundaries, both metaphorical and physical, mental and elemental. These themes originated from academic research on the myth of the classical goddess Proserpina's rape and the significance of the pomegranate to her story, which led to a broader investigation into other forbidden fruits, principally the citrus variety, and an exploration of the gardens of paradise.