Jane Rushton: Statement

The prevailing interest in my practice is a desire to understand more about the relationship between self and the natural environment. In exploring the potential for painting to evoke a similar type of reflective experience that might be had within landscape, it is fundamental that a balance is achieved between visual quality and emotional resonance.

Some of the paintings have their impetus in specific landscapes, and may evoke a sense of both intimate and infinite space. Other paintings are the result of a more conceptual engagement with "landscape", reflecting an interior, psychological and philosophical space. Whichever, the aim is to create contemplative paintings that have the potential to provoke a sense of meditative reverie.

In order to make work I journey, sketch, write, take photographs and, most importantly, sit, look and listen. The relationship is dialogical and rejects conventional notions of triumph and control over the landscape. In the studio the work develops by responding, through memory, to the intensity of the experience; it is at the interface between memory and process that the possibility for poetic transformation occurs. Through a slow, considered and almost meditative process, a dialogue occurs that directs the painting towards an aesthetic balance that is its conclusion.

Peregrination: detail