Painting encounters with environments: experiencing the territory of familiar places

Abstract

ABSTRACT Paintings and other symbolised image systems contribute to the way we see and understand the world, however accurate or flawed they may be. My research contributes to this conversation by investigating how to make paintings that allow environments to be creative protagonists rather than passive objects of representation. I do this by drawing from the painting practices of Julie Mehretu and Ingrid Calame to look at how their work registers the experience of place and use these findings to guide my practice-based research, contextualised by ‘new materialist’ theory. The research shows how unpredictability in the process of painting allows the experience of place to be registered in ways that are responsive to materials and the site; how gesture is used to reveal something about the material and the immaterial world; and how the conversations happening between different levels of experience and modes of representation in the paintings help to yield a dense and complex view of place. Through this study, I have found that paintings can make manifest the relationships between process, gesture, environments and artists and in this way can reveal the experience of place in unexpected and multifarious ways.