August, for me, always means Another Love Story. The most precious festival out there in a place that means so much to me. Killyon Manor hosts ALS every year on their vast grounds, and it’s exciting to watch the ALS crew pull together such a wonderfully engaging and thoughtful festival during the lead up to the weekend. Killyon was where I called home for the Winter 2017 into 2018 and the ground, as well as being one of the best spots for foraging for blackberries, walnut, oak galls, birch bark and elderberries, always ignites a feeling of home for me. This ALS I was given the opportunity to install ‘Red Canopy’ in the forest.
Immeditately the red hues of the pieces drew out the red tones of the soil. The twisting roots and branches of the trees are echoed in the painted strokes, constantly moving upward towards the forest canopy. I use gestural movements to react to spaces. I pour, drip, scrape, blush and bruise colour onto the surface of my paintings. Layering textures becomes a way to investigate the relationship between hues and tones. Colours emerge directly from the environment dictating the palette I work with. Colour asks to be seen. The simple application of colour to a surface is nuanced, bridges the gap in our relationship to the environments we inhabit.
The audience moved through the installation guided by their curiosity to keep discovering colours through the disruption of painted surfaces. They were invited to come closer and move around to enjoy the negative space between the trees and the works.
This was the first time I’ve had a chance to light the paintings, and Jerry came up with a subtle was to point LED spots at the works, embedding the wires and bulbs in dead branches laying on the forest floor. Although incredibly hard to photograph, the piece came alive at dusk, when the light only barely made it through the trees and the deep brown trunks and soil appeared almost black.
Massive thanks to the ALS Crew, Fellipe Lopes, Steve O’Connor, Zoe Purcell & Jerry for helpign me pull this one off.
To see more work like this, and to follow my colour exploration you can join my Colour Newsletter. Each month will focus on a particular shade and I’ll share my findings, recipes for making, and uses by myself and other artists I admire.