WHEN : 1st – 25th May / Opening 3rd May, 6:00pm
WHERE : Ryan Renshaw Gallery
My practice re-interprets notions of what constitutes landscape painting, both within an art historical context and a contemporary social context. The paintings deal with the tensions and dichotomies in both the depiction of the natural world and our relationship to it. I am concurrently exploring the sublime in nature whilst imbuing a sense of toxicity and artificiality in this depiction. The intention is to reflect upon the contradiction between our inherent connection to the natural world and continual distancing from it.
The paint pours comprise of acrylic paint, inks and mediums. I am fascinated by the way the movement of the paint mimics something from the natural world such as a lava flow, a landslide, an avalanche. Within the dried paint pour I look for something that looks like a tree branch, a cliff or a mountain and then cut and collage the pieces. I use airbrush to achieve sky and watery effects and finally resin as a finishing surface. I have been influenced by the way a painter such as Laura Owens uses various techniques in the ‘vocabulary’ of painting to make it evident to the viewer that we are ‘completing’ the painting. My paintings aim to convey ideas of nature, alchemy and creation by operating on one level as a landscape another as abstraction.
Image: Milkwater (2013), Acrylic on board, 120cm x 240cm
Text: Kate Shaw (2013)
