Claire Winfield
Artist & Educator
North Devon Collaborations
At various times between 2004 and 2011 I met and worked collaboratively with a number of other artists who were responding to the landscape in and around North Devon. We all shared the same starting point of gathering visual information directly from the landscape however our work developed through a variety of disciplines which included painting, land-art, installation, illustration, performance and photography.
In addition to the value of sharing ideas through collaborative working I also enjoyed drawing upon outside inspiration for subject matter encouraging me to return to the disciplines of observational drawing, sketchbook work and photography.
The projects resulted in the work being shown in three separate exhibitions at Broomhill Art Hotel near Barnstaple (below) kindly hosted by Rinus and Aniet van de Sande.
Art on the Rocks 2006
This project saw the development of some process based painting as I responded to my observations about the sea washing over the sand leaving marks and traces. I tried to "mimic" this process in the way the paintings were made by lying the canvas on the floor and freely pouring thin washes of acrylic paint over the surface allowing for the natural effects of dribbling, splashing and splattering to leave their marks. It was as if the making of the work had become the work itself.
A Walk of Art 2009
I used the opportunity presented by this project to experiment with and explore a much more traditional and figurative approach to painting inspired in part by ideas surrounding Vanitas. I was continually reminded of my own mortality through continual encounters with wild creatures both dead and alive on my walks across the Moor. This resulted in the following series of small oil paintings entitled Creatures of Exmoor Dead and Alive (see below). All 30 x 23 cm.
About the Land 2011
This third collaboration enabled me to continue building upon my renewed interest in recording and responding directly from the landscape in addition to which I found myself returning to my long-term interest in the natural processes at work along the beach and in particular the marks and forms left behind by the changing tides and weather conditions as well as the traces of the existence of marine life.
