In My Nature Elevating objects by means of rendering so that they then appear worthy of attention raises questions about the hierarchy of subject matter. What is worthy of depiction and what is not? In turn, this draws attention to the act of seeing things that are commonly overlooked as trivia.
The initial inspiration for this current body of work started with my garden. Nature is one of the most amazing things to me. I think of it as a place of discovery, I am inspired by it, I depend on it – it’s raw material for me.
In the city nature is almost covered up, but there are pockets here and there in gardens, parks, even by the side of the road. The paintings I create are derived from photographs, which I take myself. I am usually pointing my camera at the ground, so the images are pieces of the earth seen from above, including what ever happens to be there: leaves, pebbles, grass, soil and the odd bit of rubbish! I use the camera to jot down what I see. I like looking and describing, using the images to explore the process of making. You could look at it as a way of controlling images that are from nature. My aim is to imbue the canvas with a sense of worthiness, with the hope that the viewer will also be drawn into examining those things in nature which are so often taken for granted.
The collective title of this body of work ‘In My Nature’, sums up both the imagery and also pertains to the way in which I work. The medium used is oil on canvas – I like the tradition associated with oil painting. Translating from one medium into another, as I do with a photograph into a painting, means that you have to really understand what you are looking at: decode it, break it down. Furthermore you have to have a good knowledge of the new language that you’re translating into i.e. the language of painting, so that the resulting image really functions in the space between the two. There is more than one way to create a painting based on photograph; I paint in a flat realistic manner, which is reminiscent of the illustrations in Ladybird books of the 1960s. I grew up with these books and read them as a child, so there is probably a subliminal link. I meticulously cover the whole surface of the canvas with the image, an all-overness, which does away with foreground, middle distance and background, making the surface of the canvas whole; giving value to the space that is in front of you.
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