TREMENHEERE SCULPTURE GARDENS, Nr Gulval, Penzance TR20 8YL

Upstairs Gallery

11 FEBRUARY – 3 MARCH 2023

PRIVATE VIEW 11 February, 2 pm – 4.30 pm.

MY DREAM FOUND IN A PHOTOGRAPH

“My Dream Found in a Photograph ….. I was rootling through a pile of books that had been stored away and found an old photo album from my paternal grandparents who in their early marriage had lived in Northern India. I’ve always had a dream of travelling to Kashmir and to discover the journey they made there over a100 years ago sparked a new venture for my imagined ramblings.

Photographs are a frequent material I use as a resource for the genesis of ideas for paintings, familial ones resonant strongly throughout my work. Along with the photos, are some Indian fabrics that belonged to my grandmother, and I somehow wanted to include them in the images for the exhibition. This in turn made me also research Kashmiri lacquer work, its intricate decoration, fabulous colours and stories.

My idea was to limit my paint palette (a hard and difficult process for me!) for the structure of the story, I’ve used colours from my own memories from a visit I made to India 20 years ago… like a faded recollection or photograph, blurred edges, distant images which are hard to define but leave an essence, I suppose a ghost of the past….. I then selected segments of the painting to place a pattern or a story, with no restriction of colour in these sections; this creates a duality in the painting, a story within a story, layers of time and space, a conflict of stillness and business, a real and imagined life.