Showcasing vibrant, colourful landscapes, painted ‘en plein air’ through the seasons in Cornwall, Scotland and in NSW Australia after the fires. A body of work that leans into our relationship with water, rivers and sea through adventure and safe harbour. Nature rich, beautiful sites. Ancient inspiration translated through a prism of hope.
The collection (slowly released online) covers select pieces from 2019 to 2023, moving through the lens of international independence to quiet pregnancy and becoming an Artist Mother. Beginning with an artist's residency at Trebah Gardens and an inaugural solo show there in spring 2023.
On entering this exhibition, or viewing the paintings, in person or online, I invite you to take five nasal breaths of five seconds out and five seconds in. Linger on the out breath. Painted using full body, I invite to use your own body as a gatekeeper to reading the paintings. Consider them from different distances, relax your eyes, allow them flux, feel your feet grounded, enjoy. Come back and see them at different times in the day, they change in different lights.
I am evermore aware of our need for the disappearing Wildscape. Our landscapes talk to us all the time. They change and shift under our gaze. The weather moves through. Light shifts. Time passes. I use colour to work with the things that are there but that we can’t immediately see. How things relate to each other in the wider landscape, and how they then relate to our own field of vision. It’s a cross between a language and a belief system.
I have held fast to what I do, that there is this importance to record. To see. To show. To connect, so that others could also. Can painting be sculpture, can it be dance, performative, ritualistic? Can the material change? Be in flux? Change state? Can it bring joy, to move, to enliven?
Surrendering to the process of painting, when in these spaces is both a humbling and moving experience. To push into the constraints of my own physicality, to be vulnerable in Nature and to give over to it, to let it lead, it creates an extraordinary experience every time. Finding urgency in the approaching tide, play in wind change, dazzle in the bright sun, acceptance in the rain and resilience and an inner heat in the cold. The canvas itself shares a vulnerability, I move to translate this shifting wildscape. I paint until the hunger of vulnerability becomes whole. Being in these spaces where people may pass through but where I remain is the most powerful gift. To watch a landscape for hours, the seeing becomes expansive as the view unites.
*Photo portrait of Chloë by Arran Busk