Christopher Le Brun and Charlotte Verity met as art students in the 1970s in London. They thrived on the city’s experimental creative energy and shared a love for nature and great traditionalists past. They married in 1979, setting off a creative partnership that would establish them both as powerhouses of British abstraction. Over five decades from when they first crossed paths, they are staging their first joint exhibition in the United States—in sunny Florida, of all places.
“Left Hand, Right Hand” is a moving, bifurcated show, divided into two rooms, each artist claiming one. The split seems to mirror their real-life strategy of separated practices. Le Brun and Verity requested separate interviews, reluctant to go too far into reflections on the other’s work. “We did discuss the possibility of mixing work,” says Le Brun, “but they have slightly different atmosphere, different tone, and the paintings cumulatively are more coherent.” As an example, he proffers that his wife sometimes depicts the same plant a season apart. “You need those two together,” he explains. “If you put one of my paintings alongside, you immediately break the narrative.”
The duo strike a curious balance between embracing the sentimental and staving it off. Both were against playing up their coupledom to title the show. To Le Brun, that would be “too much, embarrassing.” To Verity: “Schmoozey.” They went the matter-of-fact route—he’s southpaw, she’s righthanded. “Your right brain is different from your left brain, but [together] they make up a unity,” Le Brun explains.
Their artistic philosophies go hand in hand, they seem to want to let them breathe where possible. The connection is clearest to see when paying attention to their contradictions. Going from the left room (Le Brun’s) to the right (Verity’s) reveals a unique dialogue, fostered over many years, and not often referenced in their divergent careers. That’s what makes the show so special. Curated by Robin Vousden, their longtime friend and collaborator, it’s on view through April 25 at the Gallery at Windsor in Vero Beach.
Vero Beach isn’t the first place you’d think of for this joint exhibition. But Windsor, a small community between the Atlantic and the Indian River, lists a dedication to culture among its founding tenets; walkable and verdant, designed in the New Urbanist tradition, it feels like a movie set even. Its homeowners speak of moving there for shows like these, put on in the private gallery overlooking green golf fairway—also, its performances, panels, impressive permanent collection, and luxe amenities.
There was a great turnout for the “Left Hand, Right Hand” opening reception. Both painters have achieved long careers and institutional success. Le Brun was knighted for his services to the arts in 2021. His work has been acquired by the Tate, MoMA, and the Met, and for eight years, he served as president of the Royal Academy.
Verity has her accolades, too, exhibiting in group shows and major surveys at the Hayward Annual, Pallant House Gallery, the British Museum, and MoCA; since 2001, she’s been faculty at London’s Royal Drawing School. Verity is soft-spoken, but her watercolors and drawings are evidently daring. “Delicacy and detail are things I’ve regarded, quite a lot of my life, as risky for a contemporary painter,” she says. Naturalistic moments, painstakingly rendered, press up against the boundaries of how we tend to think of abstraction.
The pair enter one another’s studios maybe once every six weeks, and see it as their duty to give honest critique, even if it makes (by their own admission) Verity cry, and Le Brun cross. They both work from life, and that comes with a great deal of pressure. The former often paints flowers. If she misses the mark, she’s resigned to wait a year before finishing it off: “There’s a symbolic interest in catching the bloom when it’s alive, knowing that it’s dying,” she says.
Le Brun, on the other hand, makes sweeping color fields, sometimes poring over a canvas for ages before deciding that it’s done: “The final session of the painting may be quick, but it’s been in the studio for weeks and weeks. I’m trying different things on it, running out of ideas, putting it away, turning it up and down.”
Beyond aesthetic choices, each artist centers pleasure, beauty, imagination, and wonder. They’re both fascinated by the natural world and its rhythms, and by virtue of their partnership, they pull from the same vistas. What they make their subject, however, can be mismatched on the surface. Gazing out a back window, Verity might notice the Kiftsgate rosebush climbing their garden wall, outlining the curves of its branches (My Nest, 2017). Le Brun would turn skywards, stacking yellows and oranges up and down, left and right, to evoke a 12-hour day (Phases of the Sun II, 2024). It’d be easy to miss their parallel mission—to capture the experience of light.
“I can’t paint the sky directly where I am in London,” says Verity. The best alternative she’s found is to reflect it in the color of a plant or a flower, against a darker or washed-out backdrop to communicate the sun’s intensity—or lack thereof. Le Brun, faced with the same dilemma, relies on dynamic abstraction, sometimes working a canvas for months, scraping and layering, before he lands on a composition that feels reflective of the unfolding he’s moved by, be it a season or a song.
Another risk, she mentions, lies in electing to paint flowers, especially as a female artist. Her work, really, is metaphorical, grappling with the ephemeral and the fragile—but at risk of misidentification as traditional still life or botanical illustration, or something else overly romantic. Perhaps this is part of the reason the pair errs on the side of pragmatism. It’s understandable, and makes it all the more exciting when their dreaminess shines through.
Le Brun speaks at length about enigma and mood, the emotion that drives his art forth. “Not knowing what you’re doing is a feeling. It’s a real feeling, and it’s helpful. Particularly the great American abstract painters were feeling their way into something very mysterious, for which they needed a lot of faith.”
Up close, his pieces are texturally rough—the paint applied liberally, often straight from the tube. Unlike Verity, he doesn’t know what he’s depicting at the very start of his process. His colors are chosen instinctually.
The mystery is there for Verity, too. She talks about the challenge of depicting the reflection of a few stems submerged in water. She then spoke of rendering “the moment” as this mystical undertaking: looking closely invoked a feeling that’s there-but-not-there in the canvas, like the elusive sun. “Each of these moments is like a glance,” she says. “When I’ve got my brush in my hand, I love to be surprised. You’re working with something that’s very quick and fleeting, and you’re making something that’s going to last.”
