Clare Maynard

Artist statement

I am currently working on a painting and photography trilogy concerning my memories of journeys and places which have been familiar to me over the years. In my work I try to reflect the sense of freedom I have experienced in these places. I am also interested in the crossover between urban and rural environs. I am often influenced by film and photography with regard to technique in my work and also environmental themes. Sometimes I represent the intermediate visual experience of transition or travel across landscapes, capturing particular subjects which are fleeting and unusual. My approach to the work is totally experiential and has developed over years of travel, usually overland, gathering landscape images and producing paintings and more recently photographs in groups for these individual projects. In between the trilogies I am producing photographs for Random Places which represents the landscapes in between the other projects.

The journals I keep-both photographic and written act as sketchbooks, it is how I record visual material which then inspires a body of work. The challenge for me is to produce works which encompass the atmosphere and often depth of history of a place.

The first part of the trilogy was 'Memory of Snow' a series of large landscape paintings based on a winter in the Czech Republic and exhibited with Welsh landscapes of a similar theme. These were exhibited in Wales and Berlin in 2007.

'Memory of Light'  part two of the trilogy is painting and photography based, shown at Oriel Mwldan, Cardigan, Wales 2011 and at Oriel Andrew Lamont Gallery, Brecon, Wales 2011 also in the interior of a government building in Berlin, Germany 2011.

Work in progress

At the research and production stage, the third and last part of the trilogy 'Memory of Fire' based on travels to Rome and the surrounding region of Lazio which holds relics of Etruscan culture in the landscape (photography based) it is due for exhibition at The Institute for Cultural Diplomacy, Berlin and Random Places is ongoing.

All small photographs are printed on order, large photographs shown here from Memory of Light are currently available.

Awards

2010 Production award for Memory of Light Arts Council of Wales

2006 Individual artist project award for Memory of Snow, Arts Council of Wales