Katharine Le Hardy
Carry many dreams, 2022
Oil on canvas
150 x 120 cm
Copyright The Artist
One of four large works made in response to the question, If You Could Save One Place . . . Whilst investigating human themes in my work over the last...
One of four large works made in response to the question, If You Could Save One Place . . .
Whilst investigating human themes in my work over the last year since lockdown, the task of ‘If you could save one place’ started me thinking about places I’ve been and where I would love to revisit. I visited the rainforest in Brazil 10 years ago, the ‘lungs of the world,’ just for a short time, but some places just make you want to go back. I pulled out all my photographs and drawings from 2012 and researched the rainforest. Whilst my memory has idealised and heightened the lush and rich landscape over time, the reality is that the intervening years have been catastrophic from an environmental point of view. I see the landscape as a witness to our actions as humans and therefore, for this series of work, I felt it important to keep the landscape free from human elements.
These works are built up with layers of transparent paint. Images from different places have been layered up, like memories, to create almost entirely imagined, immersive landscapes. Each layer reacts to the mark making of the previous one. Every previous action has an effect on the next, just like ours.
Whilst investigating human themes in my work over the last year since lockdown, the task of ‘If you could save one place’ started me thinking about places I’ve been and where I would love to revisit. I visited the rainforest in Brazil 10 years ago, the ‘lungs of the world,’ just for a short time, but some places just make you want to go back. I pulled out all my photographs and drawings from 2012 and researched the rainforest. Whilst my memory has idealised and heightened the lush and rich landscape over time, the reality is that the intervening years have been catastrophic from an environmental point of view. I see the landscape as a witness to our actions as humans and therefore, for this series of work, I felt it important to keep the landscape free from human elements.
These works are built up with layers of transparent paint. Images from different places have been layered up, like memories, to create almost entirely imagined, immersive landscapes. Each layer reacts to the mark making of the previous one. Every previous action has an effect on the next, just like ours.
