Grammar 3 is a small-scale oil painting on linen, presented in Verity Coward’s solo show Charismatics at Brooke Benington. Using thick, earthy, brown-toned paint, Coward creates a murky composition that looks almost like a hole filled with a cosmology of undefined forms which are grounded in colour but abstract in representation. The shapes remain indistinct, giving the painting a mysterious, other-time feel, as if it opens onto an unstable world. The absence of rules she represents is a means to convey ideas of freedom from imposed societal law.

Coward builds her paintings from handmade cardboard and papier-mâché models. These rough sculptures don’t appear in the final work but shape it from behind the scenes. In Grammar 3, these references to the real world are missing. Her work is playful and tragic, influenced by cartoons, theatre, and stories like Punch and Judy, Looney Tunes, and Goethe’s Faust.