This body of work is a departure from my preferred method of creating paintings. Usually I would spend time walking for miles in and around the lakes and fells: looking, sketching, taking notes, photographs and feeling how it is to be in that place. The pandemic and subsequent lockdown changed all that I had been planning, and an injury to my foot is still keeping me from the fells as lockdown eases.
I therefore decided to explore the area around Keswick remotely- by Google Earth and the OS Map app, using the 3D images of the landscape from my computer screen as a source for my paintings. I hoped my memory of light, weather and the seasons- how they dress a landscape, could give life to the places I had never been.
Many of the viewpoints I chose to depict are of aerial perspectives. The freedom of zooming the cursor above lakes and mountain tops was like flight, a glint of freedom in contrast to the restraints of lockdown. This is where the title of the exhibition “A bird’s eye view” came from.
Once I’d decided on the title, a selection of the birds I associate with the habitats of the fells and lakes made their way into the new work. Most of my paintings are made on out of copyright OS maps which have carefully been glued to a support and prepared for painting with applications of clear gesso and watercolour ground.
I paint with acrylic inks, watercolour and acrylic gouache with the addition of drawing pens, soft pastels and pencils in various mixed media combinations. The transparency of the inks and watercolour allow the map to be seen when viewed close up, but become part of the structure of the landscape when the painting is seen from a distance.
It’s been interesting thinking about the space between what is known, what is real and what is imagined in these landscapes. I think there is an underlying reference to the times we are living through. Aren’t we are all trying to find our way through unfamiliar terrain? Still, I am looking forward to the time when I can explore these places again in person, with my feet on the ground.