Foggy Morn Painting

Ger A. Elwood is an Irish emerging artist working from London/Ireland. She has worked in Advertising; as a Graphic Designer / Producer for TV, New Media /Print both in Ireland and London. She has closely aligned herself with the medium of painting finding it the most natural and free of any creative process. Attending Art Schools in NCAD (Dublin), West Dean (Sussex), Chelsea (London) she finds herself examining the many diverse landscapes she has experienced worldwide. As a result, one area of concentration has been abstracted compositions of rhythms, moods, memory and colour.

Working in oils, she sets out through the language of painting - line, colour, tone and brushwork, to bring about the sensorial experiences of coastal space. The paintings are an investigation how we place ourselves, physically, emotionally and intellectually in relation to these elemental forces.
Her striking seascapes hover between abstraction and figuration. The images themselves do not usually depict an actual place, but evolve from something observed, felt. The direct experience of the landscape, reactions to atmosphere are taken back by memory, drawings and colour recordings to the studio where the process of creating the finished canvas begins.
Working fast adds energy and vibrancy. Textures are built up, often in several layers, and then scratched and over painted until left with a remaining essence of the sensation experienced. The residue of these changes becomes the underlying marks and snatches of colour make the painted surface interesting. Presented is the seascape/airscape without conventional perspective, but portrays the essential qualities of a place that are not just visual.
The instinctive process of painting is what makes the canvasses come alive; raw brush strokes and subtle textures give them energy. There are a living, breathing journey, one of continual change through color, scale, mood, space, and especially light. The work is an ongoing exploration of the remembered experience. The transient skies, the laden air, deep seas and harbors, are rendered in a style that combines the sensory appeal of pure abstract painting with the strong emotional desires to communicate the atmospheric natures and the energy of the elemental forces. To convey different experiences within any one painting broken is the idea of a single view: Some times I am flying high, with others I am part of the action of the weather.