Emotional connection through colour and form: in conversation with Alice Maddicott, Lauren Elkin, and Rebecca Solnit

This dissertation explores my past and present practice to create an awareness of my vision for the future. I aim to unwrap my artistic journey and understand what motivates me to be an artist. Life is full of joy and sorrow, love and loss, good things and things we dread; we live in turbulent times. I want to focus on what inspires my creativity and how I use colour as the main communicator to capture an emotional connection with my surroundings. Colour is key to my practice; exploring its language heightens my senses and makes me feel alive. For the purposes of this dissertation, I have chosen to walk with my fellow artists, using this metaphorical process of discovery to explore themes of artistic observation through a casual setting. This allows rambling forays into unexpected ways of thinking and feeling. I will be accompanying three authors whom I admire on three walks. Together, we will explore various emotional responses to memory, imagination, physical experience, artistic methodology, and use of materials. This dissertation aims to reveal some of the reasoning and processes of my practice. My practice explores the wildness found in landscape through drawing, painting, and printmaking. I want to understand why I interpret a scene artistically. How do I use language through my palette to technically manoeuvre the materials and explore my subjects? Why am I so strongly moved to immerse myself in place? What is the power of the physical being, and why then must I express these feelings artistically?