Within my studio practice, I study different representations of the rural in popular culture. Historically, Britain’s landscape has been aestheticised and consumed as a ‘bucolic background’. My research seeks out counter-representations of the landscape which subvert a traditional-pastoral vision of the rural. I want the paintings to have an underlying sense of the natural shifting into something less familiar. The countryside is charged with a strange tension. In that, for us, it holds onto a nostalgia for a pre-industrial past, whilst at the same time it is being further hybridised to support urban infrastructure.

The paintings also present a more personal relationship I have with rurality. Having grown up in East Wales, I’m always drawn back to paint views of the landscape which I must have seen countless times throughout my life. The areas that appeal to me most are those with a quiet strangeness. The pieces of land with myths that give them a supernatural status. Using Super-8, I cut together short film collages. Often, the sites I choose to film have architecture iconic of a specific time period. Putting them in series, I hope to document a kind of historical timeline that’s residual in the landscape. Together, I hope that the films and paintings communicate the importance of landscape in the generation and preservation of both personal and social history.