oriel queens hall gallery current exhibition

Diana Heeks

11 May to 15 June

Lost in the Landscape

Artist’s statement

Around the edges of the imagination there is always the ‘over-there’ place, somewhere intriguing that calls out. For me, landscape is not something in front of my eyes to copy from, although that is sometimes good to do. Nor, necessarily, is it something to put a frame around, although that can also be good. Landscape for me is a store of memories and dreams, places and times that have been read about but may never be visited, stories of other people's journeys. This is the landscape of the imagination.
The bed-bound child explores countries laid out like a map in the cracks on the ceiling; the risen child travels her dolls around the landscape of her quilt. Simultaneously with tramping around the paths and fields of home, I am in the the textile museum which my daughter visited when she was in India. This had no publicity materials, not even a postcard, so I have had to imagine the beautiful pieces from what I've been told.
Some places seem to have a magical pull on us for reasons we can't explain. Perhaps they were lodged in the memory when we were too young to differentiate between outside and in. The road not travelled can be glimpsed out of the corner of an eye as an intriguing diversion from the set route of a car or train, leaving its marks in the brain and the heart to nestle as a source of possibilities, filed away to be explored later. The external landscape is drawn in and feeds and replenishes the inner landscape.
As I work, sometimes the paint dictates and at other times shape, colour or ostensible subject matter. However it goes, you sometimes just get a feeling that you're on the right track, that the clues and waymarks you've followed are leading somewhere new and interesting. This is exciting – but can also be deceptive, because quite often it only leads to a humiliating dead end.
When engrossed with the process, there is from time to time the choice of whether to stay ‘on track’ and continue a familiar and experienced way of working or to follow the intriguing diversion and discover something new. The planned journey is safe and ordered, one can predict the time it will take, whereas the diversion could lead anywhere. Getting lost is exactly this point in the painting process, where you become massively impatient with your plans and aims and just let what is trying to happen take you over. That's when – that's how – new stuff happens. When this happens it's almost accidental, but the elements do need to be nearly in place for the special thing to occur.
You can be lost stylistically: your overview of the work may perhaps be muddled rather than coherent. Or lost in the real exterior landscape, which can be exhilarating as long as it is not life-threatening. Or lost in the interior landscape, which is the richest place of all but also, teasingly, the most intangible and ephemeral. Or emotionally lost, perhaps in your own doubts and confusion.
I had toyed with the idea of calling the show ‘Mountain, Woodland, Fields and Garden’, because I wanted to combine the aspects of landscape which I love. But I decided on Lost in the Landscape because this form of words encourages expression of the confusion and doubt that I perpetually feel about how to bring together my differences of approach.
However it goes, for me there is usually a requirement to be lost before ‘the place’ can be found.

Lost in the Landscape: Bibliography
For some painters music is inspirational. For me, it's reading. Below are some of the books which have recently accompanied and encouraged the work.
Passenger to Teheran: Vita Sackville-West
The Arriere-Pays: Yves Bonnefoy
A Land: Jacquetta Hawkes
The Old Ways … a journey on foot: Robert Macfarlane
People of the Black Mountains: Raymond Williams