Painters Showing Paintings
Postal collaboration and exchange between myself and Sheona Baird as part of Painters Posting Paintings.
Sheona's response to my work:
"I really like the colours in the pieces Linda sent me and the ambient ebbing and flowing shapes. The way they look under light made me think of using the gauzy fabric because of the way it sort of glows. I wanted to use symmetry to create patterns with some of the shapes Linda used, this reminded me of transcendental imagery and nature mysticism in 70s films like Picnic at Hanging Rock. This prompted me to want to present our work together in a natural setting and thought that the rocks and the bright sunlight would make the pieces together look strange and enigmatic."
My response to Sheona's work:
"When I received Sheona’s work in the post, I was pleasantly surprised to discover a selection of delicate, intricate and curious works in pencil and oil on paper and canvas. I had only seen a few images of her work online but didn’t know anything about her intentions or thinking behind the work. The drawings included meticulously observed figurative elements that had been placed and translated into surreal, dreamlike environments.
My own work is abstract, yet it also draws inspiration from my immediate surroundings, particularly landscape, and I decided to respond to Sheona’s pieces purely intuitively. After laying her work out in my studio I played around with pairings of her work and mine, picking up certain colours and shapes and combining what I thought might open up a ‘dialogue’ between them. My studio work develops in clusters and wall constellations that change over time, so this process felt quite natural to me.
My initial idea had been to take the works outdoors as I sometimes do with my own work and embed them in the landscape, but the wet weather and fragile nature of Sheona’s work made me change my plans. Instead, I put on a mini exhibition in my kitchen and studio.
I see the installation as open-ended: fragments of memories, observations, feelings and dreams forming both a landscape and mindscape."
