CLARE YARRINGTON is a visual artist, based in rural central Scotland.

Winner of 2009 JD Fergusson Art Award, Perth

 

I am interested in how our environment has been formed and how we interact with it. This relationship is dynamic and involves not only the elemental forces of nature but also our perception of time. In the same way as the past is imperfectly preserved, so we remember our own experiences in fragments. I am intrigued at how to visually express this.

My previous experience working as an archaeologist informs my work, as does my enjoyment of rock climbing and mountaineering. Directly observed work of the landscape and the human figure provide the basis for more interpretative prints, sequences of images and collages. I like to move freely between different media such as charcoal, pastel, oil paint, collograph printing, to name just a few, as each provide a particular effect and character. 

Collages can be more experimental and allow me to explore varying perspectives and juxtapose different ideas and images. Using scraps of my own previously discarded work as visual fragments I collage then draw, paint, scrape away and collage again if needed. The actual fragments of collage can correlate directly to fragments of memory, but in many ways it is more like virtual archaeological reconstruction. From the fragments of past work I 'reconstruct' the 'evidence' to make a new interpretation. The result is full of ambiguities, as the past and our memories always are, but the coming together of differing visual ideas can bring about new possibilities that would never have made any other way.

Perthshire Open Studios | Fife Dunfermline Printmakers Workshop