Liliane Tomasko and Sean Scully work in neighbouring studios in New York and Munich. Scully was born in Ireland in 1945; Tomasko in Switzerland in 1967. They met in London and married in 2007, and both create abstract art based on observations from real life. A new joint exhibition at Newlands House Gallery in Petworth, a market town in the South Downs, presents their paintings side by side.

Despite living and working together, both artists have their own distinctive approaches to abstraction. Tomasko starts by capturing everyday moments and scenes on a polaroid camera, then translates the photograph to a drawing, and the drawing to a painting. Along the way, she pares back the image, erasing recognisable details and gradually edging away from reality with subtle shadows and shifts in focus. Created on either paper or canvas, her paintings are composed of lines that swoop and curve around bold patches of colour. Her brushstrokes are broad, her palette bright and intense. In and among the markings are hints of common household items, from crumpled bedsheets and discarded clothes to stacks of towels – things we wouldn’t ordinarily pay attention to, but which provide a window onto our lives.

While Tomasko looks to everyday domesticity and universal acts such as sleeping and dreaming, Scully draws on his personal experience. The man credited with reviving abstract painting is also influenced by classical Greek architecture and European artists such as Henri Matisse. He divides his canvases into grids of interlocking and layered stripes and squares that evoke the landscapes of his home country and the streets of Manhattan. Colour, often earthy, is carefully contained within horizontal and vertical bands, like grass fields bordered by fences and hedges. Not too carefully, though – smears and stains keep things interesting. Paint is scumbled and furrowed and weathered; in places, it looks dry, in others it’s shiny and seemingly wet. The blurred edges of his blocks and forms give the impression that they’re almost pulsing.

The exhibition at Newlands House Gallery brings together Scully’s geometric paintings and Tomasko’s more gestural abstractions. On display in the UK for the first time is his Black Square series (2020), with dark and shadowy squares superimposed over multicoloured bands of colour, and his more figurative Madonna paintings (2018). There are his sculptures made from Murano glass, and Tomasko’s video works. The artist couple deal with abstraction differently, but there’s one thing their work has in common – far from cold and minimalist, it’s filled with energy and feeling.

From the Real: Liliane Tomasko and Sean Scully is at Newlands House Gallery until 10 October 2021