An Imagined Land

Multimedia, layered digital photographs and monoprints. 2020.

My work has long centred on the ordinary - the often unappreciated pockets of beauty that can be found in the everyday environments we inhabit much of the time. The first lockdown in 2020 threw me off kilter, as suddenly nothing seemed ordinary any more. Experiences that once would have seemed quite normal to me, like a walk on the beach, became the stuff of dreams. 

I found that during this time, my work gradually took on a more imaginative quality; while I was still creating work based on tiny details, what was emerging were ethereal, dreamlike landscapes and seascapes. I became more aware of the power of imagination during this time, when our reality was so restricted, and found my longing for wide open spaces and the sea coming to life through my images. And while the images are recognisable as landscapes or seascapes, there is also something slightly surreal about them. Perhaps in some way this was a mirror of life and the much lauded emergence into the “new normal” of the summer of 2020 - a time when life felt almost ordinary again… and yet, not quite…