Jackie Holms

I enjoy getting out into the landscape and experiencing the elements that shape it.  I like to gather sensory information on location through sketching, painting, photography and writing to take back to my studio where I seek to get the image out of my ‘eye’ and onto the canvas.  
 
My painting is a process of sensory map making - how the landscape is glimpsed: the light and colours; the textures and feeling; the smell - all of which contribute to the visceral portrayal of a sense of place. My paintings are often accompanied by original prose poems which augment the painting’s experience.
 
My paintings draw inspiration from the dramatic Scottish coastline, the quality of light, crystal seas, rugged mountains and arching skies, as well as the forms, colours and textures of the environment as the natural world slowly reclaims and repairs.  I am fascinated by the edges where cultivation meets wilderness, the tiny cracks where life thrives and ancient traces of past habitations hold out against the relentless onslaught of the elements.

I am inspired by the multi-viewpoint approach explored by Peter Lanyon, the energy and freedom of Joan Eardley and the abstract expressionists and the light and colour of Rothco, Munch, the Scottish Colourists and Fauves. I combine observation and experience with aerial, cross-sectional and imagined views to abstract the landscape whilst provoking a sense of the familiar.