We've all been looking for inspiration, taking a step back, relishing considering different perspectives. I believe art provides so much agency for this: owning it, holding onto something and taking time, a lifetime to let it in, to let it move into your very being.
A plein air artist, I want to be that conduit for you, to increase that connection that you have to the Wildscape, and to heighten your awareness when you are next in it. I believe in hope and joy as baselines and the foundations that we can use to have each day flow.
I believe that art has an ability to transform our relationship with the natural environment, individually. To remind us, of its power, of its eminence within us and to give us confirmation to reach out and be part of it. Gently. Strikingly. With impact. With emotion.
When there’s so much to say, celebrate the words, those ones we find in deep time, the ones, we hold as an understanding, as knowledge, through our experience of a painting. The painting in itself an experience, a translation, an embodiment of that acute habitat, that interplay between life and light. Nature at centre-stage with all its pulsing, interconnected, vibrance. It’s real hum. That’s what I see.
I see things in the landscape and how they work together, how it moves and changes in flux and rhythm. I see the seasons, I see the seals, the insects, (hoverflies too) & I look at the currents in the tidal waters. My paintings become a record. A record of these moments in time. A pollen count on canvas.
This detail is of Falmouth Harbour, my first post lockdown piece where I could paint for hours on end without breaking the law. I knitted words over lockdown. And I planned this first big piece. After Sydney Harbour, after Byron Bay. This was the scene I walked or ran past daily in this extraordinary spring. With the quiet, with the birdsong. With no boats in the harbour. No movement from people. Black Rock is there. The entrance to the harbour on both sides. And a seal popped up before the winds changed and blew straight in. I could knit endless words together about the painting, about the painting experience about what I saw. Because I did see. And I did paint. And I did translate. So then you see, it’s the painting to see.
Visit my rural workshop by appointment to see the recent series in mid July - Aug, to experience the work, to let them talk to each other. From winter to spring. The other land. A travelling tale of fire and water. Of home. Of lockdown. And of the value we see in art, the value we hold dear. Those signifiers for deep change to our lives, to everybody's lives and those changes that we will carry on weaving through our own actions, our own connections and experiences of the bird song, of the natural environment, and perhaps through a painting.