Andrew Hardwick 'Palimpsest'

About

PALIMPSEST / noun. Something reused or altered, but still bearing visible traces of its earlier form. A manuscript or piece of writing material, which later writing has been superimposed, an effaced earlier writing.

My work is landscape based. I use layers of paint and material to produce textural artefacts. I hope to push what painting can be.

I use left overs, things found, traces from and surplus to the modern world. Anything is fair game. I mix these materials with recycled paint (often from council recycling centres) and glue this together with canvas from old paintings and board, plus earth, ash, soot and pigment. I enjoy taking these items, that already have an intrinsic history, and giving them a new one to add to their old. A form of renewal that mirrors both the landscape and our own existence. Renewal upon renewal, layer upon layer; all leaving an echo.

The shapes of these paintings are idiosyncratic and follow the energy of the image as I'm working. This allows me to emphasise features of the landscape; its form and its texture.

My images derive from familiar places, often those known to me as a child. I return to them at all times of the year and in all weathers. For these works a valley on Bodmin Moor is central. It is seemingly unremarkable, yet the valley presents a huge canvas of sky against the gentle curve of land that celebrates the often dramatic weather. It is near an A30 layby, where a hot dog van used to park. It was a regular stop off point for visits to and from Cornwall, visited briefly but regularly for very many years. Slowly visits and walks became longer, like many loved places, it has become a place of solace and contemplation. My memories of walks from here over many years, form the basis of the body of work.

Slowly a landscape falls into the subconscious. So back in the studio, the hills of this valley, clouds, weather, ruins of a china clay pit and the A30 itself are etched and embued into the images. I hope that these rich conglomerated surfaces suggest something about notions of time, memory, geology and archeology, that I feel in the landscape. I also hope to suggest in the rawness and layering of my landscapes, something of the complications and complexities of our existence.

Andrew Hardwick, 2016