Liz Churton |
Finding a Language for the Landscape
Finding a language for the landscape is about finding signs through the marks I make. When drawing, printing or painting, I look for relationships between the things I see, touch, hear, smell...the sensations I feel... with the corresponding signs or marks that I make on a two dimensional surface. I'm fascinated with this process and what continues to take me by surprise is the ways in which we can suspend our disbelieve for sustained periods of time and see meaningful relationships between a bunch of marks on paper or canvas and the ever changing world out there.
Finding order in one's sensations
It's easy to feel overwhelmed by what I see in the landscape. The question is where to start. For me, it's about coming to terms with my sensations. These sensations have to find a way into the actual process of the creation of a piece. An essential part of a painting's life force will come from leaving a record of the process of its creation - of the struggle - of the spontaneity - of finding f the marks, the rhythms, the colour relationships, responding to the texture of things; the smoothness, the spikiness, the order and disorder, the harmony and discord and the surprises and the excitement I feel about all this.
A notion of truth
My work is rooted in the observed landscape, but I will eventually shift my interest from the merely observed, and it is at this point that other things start to kick into the process. It's this balance between wanting to pay homage to reality - or to the notion of truth at least - and wanting to endow each piece with a life of its own, in order to keep its credibility and justify its existence. We can never know where objectivity and subjectivity actually separate or meet - and what I really enjoy is that fine line - between the objective and the subjective - between what we think is reality and what becomes something else.
The Process and Romantic notions of landscape painting
I want my landscapes to remind the observer of what it is to feel the breeze and to gaze at glinting rivers and lakes, hear the birdsong, the buzzing flies and bees, touch the moisture of the ground, the smell of morning, and the calm of early evening, the frost of winter and the fecundity if mid summer. I want the observer to have those sensations - to be reminded of those things when they look at my work. I suppose, this makes me Romantic in my approach to painting. As a landscape artist working within the English landscape, however, I am also aware of the danger of painting in clichés; the English landscape has already been represented in millions of ways. One of the ways in which I overcome this is through the use of monoprinting and monotypes. This makes me think more creatively and abstractly about the marks I make. Now, more often than not, I will make a series of monoprints, before a major painting. This will enable me to get to know the subject matter. The monoprints help me in finding marks and ways of applying paint and using drawing. They help me in making decisions about space and texture and colour and design and encourage me to make use of accidental marks, serendipity, and unplanned, unexpected things.
Finding the Balance
Each piece is finished when I am satisfied that it is a true meeting between my knowledge and experience of a place and the new sensations that the landscape has given me. It's also a meeting of the hand, the eye, the mind and the heart. The most successful pieces of course, are a balance of these things.