I am a landscape painter, using charcoal, pastel and watercolour crayons. I am influenced by contours of the landscape, ancient monuments, historical field patterns and modern farming, old estate maps and archaeological drawings.
Beginning in charcoal, the lines and marks I make form the structure of the artwork. By allowing the story to weave across the paper, choosing what to focus on and creating the mood I evolve the narrative.
I start with going out and exploring the landscape. Wandering, sometimes going to specific locations, also using OS maps and Google Earth, I sketch and take photos, these are used as studies and aid-memoirs back in the studio. Once the basic drawing is made, then I relinquish the studies and allow the picture to emerge as it will into varying stages of abstraction, allowing a play of mark making, texture, tone and colour. I like to feel the medium and the paper to enable me to puzzle out the emerging picture.
So far I have work based on the South Hams in Devon, Cranborne Chase in Wiltshire and Dorset, the Quantocks and Mendip Hills in Somerset.
Biography
I started, as a mature student, with an HND in Fine Art at Weston College, then graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 2004 in Environmental Art, I also achieved a PhD in Fine Art Practice from the University of Plymouth in 2011. Over the last thirty years my art practice has shifted from drawing and painting to environmental art, through site specific art and socially engaged practice(participative art), back to drawing and painting for the last ten years. I volunteer as the Area Representative of Mendip for Somerset Art Works and for Totnes Image and Photographic Archive, I am also a member of Contemporary Markmakers in Totnes.
Janey Hunt 