Exhibited: Russell Cotes Museum & Art Gallery, Bournemouth, 19 May to 22 July, 2001
This was the first solo museum exhibition of my work and included 12 large scale works on paper. The work is made from European locations including; Italy, Southern Ireland, Scotland and the Dorset coast and focuses on the notions of ‘wilderness’. I was preoccupied with landscape and its depiction, sensing a strong connection between the physical and visual experience of place. Interested in how particular places have a visual impact on the viewer, the arrangement of the pictorial space played a profoundly important part in my work. I was aiming to create an almost theatrical experience that has an emotional charge for the viewer.
This project relates to an interest in notions of the Sublime and positions the work in a North European landscape tradition.
Large charcoal drawings were made in the field, from direct observation of the sites. This research was also used in the studio to develop large scale woodcut prints. The project of work establishes the woodcut process as a central form of communication for the artist.
The Russell Cotes Museum and Art Gallery published an accompanying exhibition catalogue (ISBN 0 905173 50 3, 22 pages, 11 illustrations).
The exhibition was reviewed in (a-n) magazine, August, 2001, p.8.