The Lockdown Landscapes

Brushes stained with pigment, paint blooming on paper, inspired by encounters with nature

A Homemade Adventure

These paintings are a celebration of adventures in the countryside and of the changing seasons. At a time when most of us have been confined and had planned adventures limited I thought it important to relive my memories of previous walks and explorations in nature, to renew my appreciation for breathtaking views and delicious sunsets that I have seen in the past, preserving those memories, while also seeking out new moments to cherish. Adventure doesn’t have to be extreme or grand. It is also quiet and slow, about intent as much as what is actually being seen.

Welcome to the Lockdown Landscapes collection…

I am privileged to live in a beautiful part of the world and I enjoy above all else soaking in the loveliness and variety it has to offer. The sky has shifted with the most spectacular palette of colour and light over the months from spring into autumn, and the earth has followed it. Where hazy pale sunlight has been followed by bright porcelain blues flecked with clouds like seafoam, new buds have emerged, nourished by rich fresh rainfall, and filled the world with delicate florals and lush jungle greenery. As the months have bled from one to another the seasons have marked the passage of time and the constancy of change. Verdant green ripens to glossy golds, as the silvery light of morning and spring always blends into the coppery gold of evening and autumn. Like so many others I have spent much of lockdown learning how to grow living things: sowing tiny seeds in the soil and watching the slow progress of tiny green seedlings into towering plants bending under the weight of fruit and blooms. Seasons ebb and flow, with small changes every day and fleeting moments stacking up like fallen leaves along with the calendar days. The steadiness of change is a comfort in times of stress and trial - after all, all things pass - and with it the comfort of constancy, of the seasons, of the fragile beauty of the natural world, reassures that change can be lived through. This is the magic of the world, that winter leads to spring, that from seemingly empty and bare soil blooms the brightest flowers and the tallest trees.

With every stroke of my brushes on paper I thought of the passing moment that would be captured forever in paint, a harmonious combination of both change and constancy. These pieces hold little fragments of memory within them, both mine and those of others who generously allowed me to use their photographs as a reference for a painting. I connected with their photographs as depicting scenes I knew well or had seen myself simultaneously from a slightly different viewpoint.

Paint carries such rich colours and depth and I hope you can almost feel and imagine the same sunlight, fluttering breezes and the choir of birdsong that surrounded and inspired the creation of this collection.

I walked in fields of gold…

I believe art can bring peace and joy to us all, through colour or through recognition, as well as the personal memories and emotions paintings can evoke. Every painting is unique to every viewer, even as we perceive colours differently, our diverse experiences and tastes also show in our responses to art. This is a collection of art produced by me, but it belongs to the viewer as much as the artist.

Process of a painting…

I walked through fields and forests, areas I recognised but were also new to me - the birds sang a familiar song and the leaves rustled in the trees with the same susurration I have heard my whole life.

An adventure is an exploration of the unknown, seeing and seeking in a different sense. But even in the newness there is a memory, a recognition of the familiar in the unknown…