The focus of my current practice is imaginary landscape painting and is concerned with capturing and interpreting a sense of the otherworldly through the medium of painting.
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Using mainly oil paints, I explore qualities such as light, softness and translucency to give my work the luminosity and ethereal atmospheres reminiscent of those created in fantasy films. Other mediums I work with are inks and watercolours for their delicacy and dendritic properties when mixed with water, as well as charcoal for its process that is interchangeable with oils. My process is intuitive and introspective; using memory and the imagination I both transform and create abstract new worlds which are inspired by the beauty and mysteriousness of our universe. The works are often small and intimate, where the tiniest mark can represent a whole horizon when viewed from a distance, yet becomes more abstract on closer inspection.
Predominantly my work features woodlands and forests and lakes and mountainsides, which I feel have magical atmospheres and offer us a unique peacefulness and otherworldly beauty; in folklore it was often the forests that were both the background and the source of fairy tales. Living in the UK provides many places with a history of folklore, including Epping Forest in London and Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire. Recently my work has used reference to Leicestershire’s Bradgate Park and Swithland Woods. Most important in the work is the creation of these imaginary places which may feature a self-portrait or character immersed in their own fantasy and escapism. Most recent is my use of ‘pareidolia’ - a term used to describe the imagined perception of seeing images or patterns where none exists. Ambiguous mark making creates this illusion in my work, conjuring up images of landscapes occupied with faces, clouds, bodies, foliage, etc.
My work relates to Neo-Romanticists inward-looking imaginary landscapes and the similar practice of Chinese landscape painting. Chinese artists embody the need to escape back into nature through “the mind landscape” where ‘painting was no longer about the description of the visible world; it became a means of conveying the inner landscape of the artist’s heart and mind’. Connections can be noted between their traditional use of inks, delicate brushwork and imaginary views and my own practice.
