- Venue
- That Art Gallery
- Starts
- Thursday, May 27, 2021
- Ends
- Saturday, June 19, 2021
- Address
- 2 Upper Maudlin Street, Bristol, BS2 8DJ
- Location
- South West England
- Organiser
- That Art Gallery
“In the past year, a spirit figure has appeared in my work, it is a universal figure not defined by gender or any cultural attachment nor does it belong to any named place. It is human at its core, it could be anyone, it is you and me in our essential state devoid of clothing, class, race, of all these things that normally define who we are; it is us undressed in our animal condition in tune with our natural environment. This human form that recurs in my paintings is a familiar figure to me as I have seen it so many times over the years turn up in my doodles on the side of magazines, the back of envelopes and any scrap of paper laying around while I listened to lectures or friends speaking. Only in the recent year have I allowed this figure to enter my paintings, as an archetypal representation of the human spirit; it surfaces in lush, wooded areas, where the undergrowth teems with insects and all sorts of life forms. It floats there unassuming, in symbiosis with its natural habitat. It takes on the role of a forager as it goes looking for the sensual pleasure of scent, taste, and the healing power of a seed.
The work is quite Romantic as it projects a human experience of harmony with nature as the primitive human morphed into a 21st century avatar. With a meditative religious fervour, this semi-god like figure who once conquered and dominated the natural world now visits it for renewal and defends it against further destruction. In this sense, the work becomes visionary and the figure a seer and a conduit between two worlds, revealing to us the interconnectivity between human and nature.”
Marie-Claire Hamon, May 2021
