MAPPING THE LAKES WITH PENCIL, PAINT AND PAPER
Coinciding with this year’s Kendal Mountain Festival, Cumbrian artist Jenny McLaren has brought her new exhibition ‘Tracing Contours’ to the Brewery Arts Centre. Landscapes hold special meaning for us. They bring a sense of comfort, peace or drama. McLaren has created a body of work made from walking and studying the landscape as it transformed across the Summer and Autumn months.
Defining herself as a walking and landscape artist, she chooses paths that take her around mountains and through passes. Routes that allow her see the mountain’s shape from a distance and from different viewpoints. High or low, narrow or wide – walking is central to her practise. McLaren loves getting lost. Going ‘deeper’ allows the landscape to reveal its mysteries, feeling the real energy and true atmosphere of a place.
‘Tracing Contours’ is a collection of these traversed landscapes. Using acrylic inks and watercolour alongside textured mark-making and old O.S. maps, it all brings together an extra dimension and connection to these special places. Artists like McLaren help us to explore and examine our surroundings. She studies what she sees, hears, smells and feels while moving through the scene before and around her. Through the simple act of walking it stimulates her engagement with the landscape, encouraging a creative intuition and internal reflection. It’s this that gives each artist their own unique painterly perspective.
On until 13th January
Warehouse Cafe
Brewery Arts Centre
122a Highgate
Kendal, LA9 4HE