Sarah Shepherd

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Artists Statement

My work is an exploration of imagery in the Scottish landscape, studying environments predominantly in the Cairngorms and the Isle of Arran. These are landscapes that I feel drawn to, having a close personal relationship to from initial childhood holidays to the present day. In my practice I use painting as a mechanism through which to explore my own set of relationships with these landscapes, investigating the impact of an artificial, digitally-derived colour palette, obtained through digital image manipulation of my own photography, on a traditional subject matter. The altered colours of my landscapes, also inspired by science fiction, conjure up different psychological sensations for the viewer, exploring the psychological versus literal landscape.

Through painting landscape I have a predisposed set of relationships to and memories associated, I endeavour to explore the visual language of memory, using different paint handling techniques to do so. Using contrasting levels of detail and the juxtaposition of defined points of focus and loosely painted sections, or exposed ground colour, the viewer is able to superimpose some of their own landscape memories into the paintings, giving landscapes personal to me a universal viewing experience.

This painting was the first I made in fourth year, initially thinking it was incomplete, it later became the foundation of my painting practice for final year, looking at the visual representation of memory in the landscape.