Graham rider - above laxey mines
A person may have moved house many times but ‘home’ can be the state of mind one returns to when you make paintings. It’s the area of one’s personality that speaks to ‘identity’, to this activity which we feel we do well, a feeling that is strong enough for a person to make sacrifices but also gain confidence to become a better person. In this painting Graham not only takes an image of a landscape but tries to make it more ‘landscape’ by using themes such as tracks located across the hillside drawn and redrawn, paint applied to form mass that feels like a towering mountain; techniques that render a hillside in light and recreate the feel of snow falling; perspective that suggests trees in the distance.
The ground we are on is very much ‘landscape and memory’, how do we make something that can stand in for our experienced memories; our perceptions of everyday lived surroundings. And is it a thing worth trying to do when we have such good photographs in the 21st century? For the artist it is very much worthwhile and in the way it was worthwhile for Celts who made sinewy designs from the streams and Egyptians who made representations of what they thought their gods might look like.
Medium: oil on canvas
Dimensions: 100 x 100 cm
The ground we are on is very much ‘landscape and memory’, how do we make something that can stand in for our experienced memories; our perceptions of everyday lived surroundings. And is it a thing worth trying to do when we have such good photographs in the 21st century? For the artist it is very much worthwhile and in the way it was worthwhile for Celts who made sinewy designs from the streams and Egyptians who made representations of what they thought their gods might look like.
Medium: oil on canvas
Dimensions: 100 x 100 cm