Engagement with painting & the landscape

It may be slightly early to pen a round-up of my year but I’m at a point where I’m reflecting on the Solo Show and exhibitions I’ve been a part of. 

I’m currently excited about the artwork I’m creating as its part of a long-standing engagement with painting – whether collaged, in a bigger assemblage, used in mixed media with photography, transparencies, glass and coloured perspex. Taking past landscape paintings and re-interpreting them – again and again, to form newly re-pieced landscape scenes.

These galvanise me as a contemporary artist and going forward I want to expand this line of enquiry into reconstruction. How people are tied into a landscape that’s continually changing and how it informs our own internal and external experiences of the world around us. 

Part of these new thoughts are inspired through Journalling too – I’ve been creating mixed media/watercolour drawings and ink/coloured pen drawings that are a personal route of enquiry. The a-n Coaching course last year has helped me to reflect more – asking questions into my practice.

‘Spliced & Diced’ (my Solo Show) at Vernon Park Art Gallery earlier this year involved my first showing of film featuring splices of landscape video with still-life inserts of art imagery. Adopting the large Museum Victorian cabinets as a backdrop to my mixed-media assemblage and sculptures provided a fresh dynamic to the Gallery’s history and 19th century architecture. It opened my eyes to the different types of gallery environment and how my work adapts with it in mind.

Next year I’ll continue to experiment. I have clay ready to mould and a projector waiting to be set-up for use in future paintings – both figure greatly in my re-constructions and adaptations of the landscape . My interest in mixed media will grow as I love using different materials for different applications, particularly when interpreting the urban vs. the natural.

That’s it for now, thanks very much for reading 🙂