Having spent the previous twelve years painting non-figuratively, I have recently introduced a strong landscape element into my more familiar grid based compositions. From the paintings of Sean Scully and the horizontal 3D works of Donald Judd I take the rigour of modernism, but temper it with a more organic and lyrical approach.
The new work celebrates my love for the saltmarshes and wolds of Lincolnshire, a landscape that I have extensively drawn and photographed. This is the flat land of a little known area of eastern England and these images are my response to the endless horizon and the elemental coming together of land, sea and sky.
However, unlike traditional landscape, these paintings, despite their newly developed openess, also play with perspective and in the manner of the photographer, Andreas |Gursky, they do not permit the viewer the comfort of a singular viewpoint; their dislocation always makes the image seem as if it is on the point of becoming something else.
I work from digitally manipulated photographs with handmade additions, which are then translated into larger format paintings.
The paintings emphasise the shape-shift of landscape, not only the recognisable changes due to erosion, man-made development and tidal surges, but also the transitory changes of light and the seasons. They start and end with the premise that there is no unmediated world.
Anastasia Lewis
March 2007
Anastasia Lewis's work can be seen on the following websites