A Green Thought

Exhibition of drawings and paintings by Diana Hand

“Annihilating all that’s made
To a green thought in a green shade”

From “The Garden” Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)

22nd to 27th September, 2018
12 pm to 5 pm

Whitespace Gallery
76 East Crosscauseway
Edinburgh, EH8 8HQ

This exhibition of paintings represents a brilliantly sunny week in May.  Two of the large paintings are based on blurred photographs of a train journey to Dundee along the River Tay. These paintings are already quite abstract.  I photographed the hedgerow as a way of understanding natural growth in colour rather than the winter hedgerows in a series of drawings (not yet pictured here).  It is on the borderline between extreme detail and abstraction.  The smaller paintings are from  quick shots of the light through a plum tree growing over my garden wall.

All these paintings were made using the grid method, trying to be as objective as possible as I moved over and over the painting, constantly reassessing and masking off whole areas. This bypassed my brain and enabled me to see the image in a much more exciting and unexpected way, which generates infinite possibilities.  It is a fascinating process to see each section as an independent composition, so fresh.

The figurative pieces, particularly the large hedgerow painting, could be translated into abstraction. I like the idea that the shapes and form are unmediated and work as the source of a simplified painting.

The small charcoal drawings are the initial studies from a black and white photograph using the grid method.