Biography
Charlotte Brisland's paintings are cut and pasted from a personal investigation into the Modern Landscape. Snapshots taken from locations lived in and investigated, brought back to the studio. She talks about her work in dichotomy, it is both a play with paint and an observation of the world around her.
Brisland is obsessed with placing herself in locations, cultures and landscapes previously unknown to her. By living in these spaces and taking on daily work, building up a quotidian routine she steps away from role of observer. The photographs made during these periods are part documentation and part snapshot. The compositions often seem perplexing and unresolved, they act as a barrier and never appear to explain anything more than the image itself. This essential 'meaningless-ness' reveals the removed sense of entering an unknown culture.
The painting medium allows for a lot of play which hangs on the composition. There is a continuous sense of risk within this play as large brushes are swept across the canvas in an attempt at accurate depiction. Initially inspired by large Renaissance works as a child, oversized life-like figures or still-lives which, on closer observation, were not constructed with tiny brush-strokes as she had believed, but in fact with big, gestural sweeps turning pure colour into photographic-like fabrics, skin and tone. This realisation re-appeared in her work much later, turning into hours of deliberate practice with objects and life models. Brisland explains that this became an ongoing practice which turned finally into the landscapes which were becoming so important to her.
