Ground Level is a small oil painting on linen by Verity Coward, part of her solo show Charismatics at Brooke Benington. Using thick, brown-toned paint, Coward creates a murky composition where shapes are not fully clear, giving the painting a mysterious, other-time feel.

Coward builds her paintings from handmade cardboard and papier mâché models. These rough, transient sculptures don’t appear in the final work but play an important role in shaping it. Often her paintings include everyday symbols like rockets, googly eyes, or cash, linking them more clearly to the real world. But in Ground Level, these references are missing, detaching the work from reality and creating a more abstract and free composition, less tied to anything we recognise.

Her work is playful, influenced by cartoons, theatre, and stories like Punch and Judy, Looney Tunes, and Goethe’s Faust. Across all her work, she explores chaos, movement, and breaking the rules, turning confusion into something exciting and full of possibility.