They are neither grounded in reality or fiction, but are fragmented somewhere between the two. The work stems from original photographs that have been taken of specific places. Our experience of landscapes is not only formed through our physical engagement but the collective memory of others, captured in photographic reproductions and other visual sources. The paintings often have a historical reference, such as Lord Byron’s Garden or Flatford Mill, where Constable painted The Haywain.
The paintings play with notions of romantic landscape, often set within perfect landscapes, un-people, and like Capability Brown’s gardens of the 18th century, perfectly composed for our viewpoint, seamlessly disguising the influences of man wthin the landscape, moving from the picturesque postcard to the tourist souvenir location of historical places such as Flatford Mill and stately gardens. The works explore representations of landscape contrasting the cultivated with untamed roaming vista.
The hyper-colour of the paintings makes the images dreamy so they appear to exist only in a memory distorted by fantasy. It is this part real, part imagined quality that I want to capture in the paintings, creating journeys into the sublime, a desire for a sense of place which hovers between fact and fiction.
The painterly surface and heightened colour explore the visual pleasure of the picturesque beauty in nature, whilst the tonal black trace of the photographic emulsion signify the dark unknown mysteries within landscape, creating an uncanny mist, that hark back to places of memory and time. Whilst this gives them a sense of authenticity, the viewer is still left within a fake illusion.
Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.
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