Let’s Get Lost

About

'Art is as much about searching as it is creating' - Knausgaard on Munch.

"The exhibition title refers to the feeling of entering into the landscape without really knowing where you are going, and the correspondence of that to the act of painting," says Dixon. "and how the image of the small figure in the wider landscape brings to mind the idea of the painter engaged with their orientation in the act of painting."

For these artists, Let's Get Lost is all about thoughtful journeying - searching, linking places, discovering, remembering stories, linking times and landscapes, and reorientation. This is reflected in their painterly interpretations of the theme - expect dislocated landscapes, interrupted perspectives, and figures dissolving and then emerging from their surroundings.

Linda Schwab's paintings have a lightness of touch, suggestive of painting as memory. With images barely fixed, her paintings often depict the figures in the act of dissolving or re-emerging into the scene. In the same way that memories can conjure up an image or person, her paintings have a shimmering quality and sometimes the viewer has to orientate themselves within the scene.

Broughton & Birnie both work on the same canvas, painting and over-painting, in turn working onto previous layers using recurring motifs; a landscape constructed of limbs, ears and hats, boozers and legs, their paintings quote the motif of 'The Wanderer' from one of Friedrich's paintings engaged in pondering his own thoughts, or contemplating an enormously psychedelic looking mushroom. These are stories and references that the Artist's share between them but the viewer has to piece together in an absurdist dance full of surprise and wonder.

Jake Clark's figures have a robust physicality about them- they are solid and as much part of the scenic background as the seaside fabrics and crazy-golf courses suggested in the work. In fact these figures occupy the space disguised by shadow stripes and bold gaudy outfits, forms broken up by shadows, holiday colours, skin sun clothing, reminding us what would the seaside scene be without holidaymakers, bumbags and flip-flops.

Adam Hanson's paintings are more celebrations of the history and aesthetics of the estuary landscape familiar to him. His figures seem of the landscape, imbued with a suggestion of time and history. The paintings speak of an aged patina created in the process of multiple layers of materials and paint, adding sand, glazes and other materials- alchemy and industrial archeology combine. 

Daisy Clarke has a similar interest in local landscape, capturing times of day and different seasons, whilst incorporating figures from the past/present landscapes with a dream-like mystery. Some of her figures appear ghost like, from another time, as if they have been captured by the scenery and it is unwilling to release them. 

Ben Walker's figures are 'coming from an imagined or mis-remembered past'. As if drawn from some long lost public information film on the perils of being- don’t play with a ball, don't go walking there, don't get lost. They are transparent ghostly figures, figures appearing layered in time-lapsed oil painting, if we called out to these figures could they hear us, would they respond?

Similarly Robin Dixon's paintings have a feeling of different times and different places. Drawn from a multitude of references and sources, the perspective is layered, not linear; parts of the painting fit together, not quite making sense but resonating with the viewer. Brush marks which are descriptive, others which are lost in the act of painting.