CHARLOTTE SWANN

Original Stratum - Lower Gallery

Monday 2 May - Thursday 2 June 2005

ARTIST’S STATEMENT
My aim in creating my landscape paintings is both to convey my feelings of awe and reverence for the natural environment, and to make subtle reference to the urgent need for its preservation. My work explores the loss of connection and attachment to the natural environment that I feel goes a long way to explaining why we exploit and damage it beyond repair. My paintings are born of an experience of and connection with the natural environment created through the familiarity of walking daily in a specific place over a period of time, and repeatedly witnessing the effects of constantly changing light, seasons and personal moods on each view and each detail of the landscape. As a consequence of this, the main source of my subject matter is the landscape with which I am most familiar, that of The Black Mountain in South Wales, where I grew up.

My paintings, often grand in scale and scope, are created in the studio from a large collection of sketches, visual notes and photographic references. My process of working is concerned with the development of an ‘archaeology’ of the painting, in which layers of detail are built up in a fusion of descriptive and abstracted forms. My technique involves painting, drawing, scratching back, dripping, pouring, rubbing, cutting away and pasting on, often allowing materials that include bitumen and earth, to form organic shapes and patterns of their own.

The element of beauty is integral to my concerns, both in its capacity to draw the viewer in and hold their attention, and in its ability to develop a sense of reverence in the viewer for the subject presented. In this regard, the aesthetic qualities of the drawn line are of equal importance in my work as those of the painted brushstroke.

“Charlotte Swann’s work is typical in combining the barely discernible outline of an original landscape with layers of wild activity. It’s a great mixture – stillness and restlessness all at once. It will make us look at the welsh mountains in a different way.”
Professor Stuart Clarke

“Charlotte Swann positively writes as much as depicts her experience of place in sweeping calligraphic statements.”
Aidan Dunne, The Irish Times

Also showing at Mwldan Upper Gallery - Ifan Bates - Midland Gothic

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