Artwork of the Month: February 2019
Title: Tide Returns to Make Seaweed Hems
Artist: Frances Hatch
Medium: Mixed media on paper
Status: On loan from artist
"Geology provides my pigment. Sun, moon, tide and season animate, reveal and conceal. I witness matter on the move: particular, provisional, exquisite."
Frances literally works with her environment when she creates her art by using materials that she finds within the location she is painting. Each site offers its own palette integrating paints with what is available in the landscape. She says that while grubbing around for tools and pigments she makes discoveries about a place that she might otherwise miss.
Frances completed a Residency in Guernsey as part of a research grant in 2016. The work produced was then exhibited at the Gate House Gallery, St Peter Port. This month's Artwork of the Month is an example from the sketchbook produced during this Residency. Throughout the project Frances stated that;
"the sketchbook became my anchor, reference book and diary throughout the two weeks. Victor Hugo, his exile in Guernsey and specifically the novel 'Les Travailleurs de La Mer'informed where I went on the Island and how I observed this new environment. He dedicates the novel to the island and mentions two particular qualities that he associates with it: harshness and gentleness. The experience I had chimes with this: Granite and light. Ancient, igneous masses rising out of clear turquoise seas."
