Exhibition and Workshop - Living Landscapes; Cleethorpes Discovery Centre.

Today was a lesson in making sure to read emails properly:  I didn't realise that I had signed up to a landscape painting workshop!!!!  However, it was a fascinating eye opener into another aspect of the art world.

The day was based around a touring exhibition of landscape paintings : Living Landscape.  Artists featured were: Robert Moore (also curator), Jake Attree, Jean Davey Winter, David Fulford, Richard Harfield and Patti Lean.  It was hosted by Meridian Arts.

I was interested in the fact that all of the work was to a greater of lesser degree abstract. For some time I have been wanting to make my own work less figurative and more abstract.  I have experimented with an ICM approach, and as much as I like the effect it has, perhaps, been overdone.  I have also been working on what I term micro-landscapes, much more intimate views of the world around me that encounter through my walking, that are by their very nature less representational and more abstract.  I include some examples at the end of this blog.

Living Landscapes

As Rob Moore says in the introduction to the exhibition catalogue, the work on show represents diverse conceptual and technical approaches.  In these paintings can be seen weather, climate, sounds, surfaces, feelings, colour, mark, horizon, high places, beauty, awe and the desolate.  He goes on to point out that each of the artists are able to find relevance in making work about the land through painting in a contemporary creative environment where digital arts have increasingly made their presence felt.  Both Rob Moore and Richard Hatfield who later led the workshop made the point that if you want the work to exactly represent the world then it may as well be through photography.  This is another reason why I am keen to move away from the figurative in my work and to include more emotion.  In her essay for the catalogue Lynne Green points out that in this time of global warming and dire predictions of the destructive consequences of human activity upon the planet, it is increasingly urgent to be reminded of the depth of meaning the landscape holds for us.  She argues that there is a growing need for us to be drawn back to our physical and emotional roots: to the land, in all its varieties and richness, that has nurtured our species.  She says landscape has been, as it remains still, a repository of psychological, emotional, symbolic, mral and spiritual significance.  Landscape, she points out, is the stage and backdrop to our history and to our present.

Jake Attree

Attree lives in York and it is here and in the work of Bruegel that he finds his inspiration. Although his work is less abstract than other work it is still far from representational.  He uses both a limited palette and thick layers of oil paint that take a long while to build up.

Jean Davey Winter

 Jean Davey Winter's work derives from aerial photographs, first taken from the windows of passenger aircraft, later from a microlight and most recently from the top of step ladders.  The initial images are digitally manipulated to evoke her emotions and then these used as the source for her paintings.  Her work reminds me of 3D maps or satellite photographs.

David Fulford

Fulford says that the strongest experiences of being in the world are bound up with being in the landscape - with travelling, walking or simply being there.  I can empathise totally with this emotion.  His work, oil on canvas, is informed by visits to Alaska and Iceland.  He works in his studio using photographs taken on his trips as source material for his interpretations of ice fields and glaciers.  He tells us that he is a member of the John Muir Trust and believes in Thoreau's maxim in wilderness is the preservation of the world.

Richard Hatfield

Hatfield's paintings are oil and acrylic on canvas and are a reinterpretation of the landscape he sees every day.  Like Rob Moore he is concerned with our growing alienation from nature and its disconnection from our daily lives.  Hatfield works in his studio producing paintings without any reference material and begins by 'playing' with the media.  As they develop associations occur which determine the outcome.  The subjects are the amalgamation of the remembered, the fleetingly observed.

Patti Lean

I feel on the same wavelength as Patti Lean as walking is intrinsic to her practice, both as a tool for unlocking ideas through repetitive physical movement, and as a whole experience of an environment.  When walking, she says, you can get to places at your own pace and in your own time, and you can follow chance and randomness.  She wild camps, as do I, and at these times she feels that she absorbs the sense of place that camping brings.  Whilst walking she collects information in the form of sketches, photographs, objects and sound recordings.  Back in the studio she often introduces other visual modes to produce her abstract works such as maps, plans, prints, rock pigments, found objects, 3-D work and a performative element, in mono-printed traces of walks and footprints.

Rob Moore

Here is another artist who is inspired by and enjoys walking and nature.  Since childhood he has immersed himself in the landscape.  Although he sketches, makes notes and writes poetry whilst out walking, his current work is is imaginative and produced in his studio. These paintings are, however, informed by his memories which insinuate themselves into the paintings. 

Artist (Curator) Talk by Rob Moore

In his inspirational talk Moore explained that all the artists featured in the exhibition Live the landscape they portray, hence the title of the show.  He was forceful in saying, as well, that landscape is a living thing.  All of the artists he told us have a strong interest in drawing and all the featured work was abstract.  He says that he learns by looking at other people's work.  I can testify to this from my own experience of our Hangouts.  Like myself, Moore is heavily influenced by Robert MacFarlane, Andy Goldsworth and Richard Long as well as the works of Ted Hughes and Seamas Heaney.  He was passionate when explaining his concerns for the state of our planet and the effects of climate change which occupy his thoughts and in his own work the stronger colour and bold compositions are a result of his thoughts about the increased fragility of the places that we inhabit.

I found this exhibition truly inspirational and the emphasis on walking and immersion in the world around us, as well as a huge concern for out planet, was a common theme exactly in tune with my own thoughts and feelings.  Many of the works remind me of what I am trying to do with making more abstract imagery by concentrating on micro-landscapes.  I was also reminded of my own work on rewilding and the book I am currently reading by environmental activisit George Monbiot: Feral.

Workshop led by Richard Hatfield.

This workshop gave participants an opportunity to experiment with techniques used by Richard Hatfield.  Although I quickly realised that I am not a painter (not yet anyway!) Richard made the suggestion that I could combine painting and photography by overlaying a photographic emulsion over a painting (?) and when discussing this in our hangout today other suggestions were made including experimenting with cyanotypes.  Lots of food for thought.

Some of my own micro-landscapes.