Studio Revelations
Insights on Corinne’s Art Practice
2017
Despite the ethereal quality of my landscapes and the sense of ease they evoke, I am a determined and hard-working artist. My studio is a space fertile with ideas, equipment, energy and aspirations. The work I make in this ‘sacred’ place reflects my passions – nature, spirit, sustainability, mindful presence, well-being, exploration and freedom. It explores transience and the aesthetic of ‘the drift’ as it evokes glimpses of that which is ‘beyond knowing’.
My process is to work on a large body of canvases simultaneously, each one telling a distinct, yet connected part of the same story. The narrative is drawn from encounters with nature – experiences of ‘events’ in the natural world, that ground me, but at the same time allow me to drift into unexpected spaces and imaginative possibilities.
I use a square format for many of my works – referencing modernism, abstraction and the processes of photography. Mostly I use photographs that I have taken, of happenings in nature as the source material. The original photo is cropped to create the desired composition and intensity or keynote of feeling in the image. The works begin with strong colour grounds, usually reds, oranges or yellows. This process serves to unify the image, as well as create colour contrast and visual vibration within the work as it evolves. Once started, my work evolves slowly, with many layers of paint, often thinly applied in washes or scumbled onto the canvas. This ensures that the transparency of colour and visual vibration is preserved. The method of gradually layering the paint creates movement across the surface that enhances the viewer’s experience of being transported into and beyond the image.
Each work begins similarly but ends with its own voice. At a discreet, yet undefinable point in the painting process, I set aside the original source image and allow the work in front of me to speak for itself – to tell me what it needs to encapsulate its own essential story. This is where intuition and truth to process and the physicality of the materials is crucial to the successful completion of the work. Usually, I will rest a painting at this stage – within sight, but in the periphery of my attention so that intuition resonates more clearly as my rational mind disengages from the process of decision-making and allows unexpected possibilities to be presented.
Often I title my work with words that can be both verbs and nouns, like ‘Hope’ or ‘Promise.’ This feels right, as I intend my work to embody both objective reality and an active experience. The viewer experiences my paintings within the rational, objective world, just as they attend to happenings in nature – a flock of birds rising on the updraft, storm clouds clearing, light flooding the sky… At the same time, the viewer may choose to actively drift into the non-rational – the subjective otherness of the non-objective that privileges non-linear journeying and glimpses of the unknowable.
It is for this reason that my works are predominantly sky paintings. The sky is a boundless space – a place of alterity that is ‘other’ – often beautiful, but not benign. The transience of light and shade, cloud and colour allows me to free-fall and to soar, to experience tumult and disorientation. The paradoxes of human experience and the world are mirrored in the apprehension of the sky’s immeasurability.