Elemental
Artist Statement
As an abstract artist, working within the field of expanded painting, my practice is grounded by my profound connection to the natural world as I analyse why a sense of ‘place’ is often entangled with emotion. I think about what it means for ‘things’[1] to exist, by analysing my own lived experiences, and in response to the transformation of the environment.
My current work questions the drainage of the fens and explores parallels between local and global issues of reclaimed, and colonised land, to challenge the discourse that portrays land reclamation as ‘progress’. By seeking to provide an alternative narrative, I want to encourage my viewers to think differently about these landscapes to nurture multi-species tolerance[2], in the fens, and elsewhere.
I observe the environment through deep listening[3], by sketching, photography and creative writing within the landscape. My work flows from representation to abstraction, as I respond to light and energy that is constantly changing around me and ideas evolve through a process of ‘thinking through making’. I iterate sketches in the studio as visual prompts of the atmosphere of ‘place’, for my larger works on canvas. I paint and draw in multiple media, and ‘feel’ the sensation of ideas emerging, by adding and removing layers of materials to my substrates. Experimentation is key to this process, and I embrace the creative tension of an unknown outcome – ‘encouraging’ materials to settle into place through their own agency, to channel the inherent nature of the medium, rather than consciously direct it. The activity of ‘painting’ reveals the narrative theme, after several back and forth ‘conversations’. Completed works are often ambiguous in scale and can be perceived on both a macro, and micro, level across the plane of the surface of my substrates.
I am an ecofeminist concerned with, and about, the Anthropocene. I am interested in object-oriented ontology, the works of Anna Tsing, Tim Morton and the Deleuzian idea of becoming[4].
Ultimately, I want my audience to contemplate what might become possible, if human beings could relinquish the need for power and control over the environment, and one another.
[1] Ian Bogust, Alien Phenomenology, 2012, the University of Minnesota Press.
[2] Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble, 2016, Duke University Press.
[3] Pauline Oliveros, Centre for Deep Listening, available online at: https://www.deeplistening.rpi.edu/deeplistening, [Accessed 21/11/24].
[4] Adrian Parr, The Deleuze Dictionary, Edinburgh University Press, 2010, pg 25.
Contextual Statement
How can a practice of expanded painting, drawing on materials and the landscapes of the fens challenge the dominant narrative of fen land reclamation to reimagine a positive outcome for the more than human world?
This project takes inspiration from the elements of the natural world and explores the impact of land reclamation of East Anglia where I live, focussing on the strange and beautiful landscapes that were transformed by the drainage of the land and subsequent, intensive farming.
Through a series of investigative pieces; including film, photography, poetry and painting I aim to evoke unseen, elemental forces, where movement and traces of latent energy thread across a landscape that is subdued, but not submissive. I explore the parallels between local, and global issues of reclaimed and colonised land and the discourse that portrays land reclamation as ‘progress’,
I sense that there are many untold stories, and an ancient knowledge, that lie buried within the soil of the fens. Traces of ghostly waterways, like lost limbs seeking their host, remain as silty tendrils within the ploughed fields, and can be seen from satellite images. The dark peat of the soil is alive and constantly moving as country roads warp and buckle, as the land expands and contracts with rain. In sun and wind, earthy topsoil takes flight – perhaps in search of long-lost salty marshes and ancient, silty kin. What does the voice of the land say to us if we were able to hear it?
As an abstract artist, working within the field of expanded painting, my practice contemplates the hubris of humanity’s behaviours across millennia by exploring the themes of control verses unpredictability. Materiality plays a crucial role in this work, serving as a metaphor for my emotion and is translated through the physical act of painting and writing. Also, by incorporating site specific elements like earth, sand and found objects in my work, I seek to create layers of meaning and depth, both literally and metaphorically.
In revisiting this view of the land, I hope this work may encourages others to think differently and create new connections that will nurture multi-species tolerance, in the fens, and elsewhere.
Process & work in progress
Elemental Exhibition
Installation Views
