Laura Gibbs
Traces
Materials: Wild clay (Chilterns “clay with flint” strata), 300gsm paper, earthenware slip cast “paper”, manganese dioxide.
My work explores my relationship with, and instinctive reactions to the natural environment in local woodlands by painting and printing with clay sourced nearby. Following in the English Romantic tradition my work is an intimate and personal reflection on my connection to nature drawn into close focus by painting directly on to tree stumps, bark, mosses and fungus littering the woodland floor. As a result, the process and the resulting film have a contemplative, almost meditative quality to them. The ephemeral nature of the marks and the return of the unfired clay to the dust and mud of the woodland floor comments on the transient nature of humankind when considered on geological timescale and the fact planet earth will long out live us. Using the rich red terracotta clay sourced from my garden a few hundred metres from the woodland I have painted directly on to landscape at micro scale using my fingers and simple tools. I have then captured the work by taking prints of the paint onto paper or a white clay body as well as filming and photographing the process.
