Claire Morris-Wright
Participating in The Land as Other
My art work is based on personal responses to my surrounding environment.
I observe small areas of landscape, watching carefully over long periods of time.
Immersing myself, looking in detail at every aspect of that space. A deep awareness of seasonal changes, biodiversity, flora and fauna - researching local information/history and making careful records of the effect and influence the land has on me. Lists of weather, colours, obscure plant names, rubbings, ink drawings and fallen leaves all go into my recordings. Chance intervention is my methodology.
It is often the mistakes and flaws that interests me which allows deeply symbolic references to emerge.
I use natural materials, where possible from the land itself, printing, and drawing with soil, berries, charcoal, moss and lichen. I aim to convey the texture and tone of the season, echoing the range of natural interventions I have encountered.
In print I want the work to depict seasons, movement of light and weather, each print is therefore unique. I also use maps for research looking closely at the -legends- allowing an alternative view of the land, they are often imbued with meaning and metaphor, literally mapping the strata of a life's journey.
As a welsh woman no longer living in Wales, one could say that I am displaced or disconnected from my homeland, yet I have close familial and emotional connections with parts of Wales. I see Wales as a land and culture that I have a deep affinity with yet I see myself as ‘the other’ a visitor a tourist. I have a keen ‘sense of place’ when close to the river Teifi, the estuary near Cardigan carries the ebb and flow of this wide expanse of fresh and sea waters, a merging and exchange of differences. The mixing of seawater and freshwater provides high levels of nutrients both in the water and in sediment, making estuaries among the most productive natural habitats in the world. They have a unique biodiversity which copes with high levels of pollution from the land and connecting waterways. There are a host of striking metaphors for me within this area and it is these symbolic images that I will be drawing attention to. I will be making new prints about this estuary referencing the exchanges of waters and researching the ‘Brackish’ sediments and soil types in the river. I am really curious about the geology and have planned to seek guidance from the potter in St Dogmaels - collecting samples of soil and plant forms to make ink with and print from.
