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- 05 September 2024
Aimee's stunning exhibition, is created on paper using charcoal, graphite pencil, pencil crayon or chalk pastels. She studied fine art at Falmouth University. Aimee has lived and worked in Shetland since 2016. Please read the text below to find out more
This exhibition of recent works on paper reimagines landscapes through varied sources of inspiration, including rocks, trees, plants, photographs and online maps.
Through drawing, an immersive process which unfolds over time, Aimee seeks to explore nature’s constant flux. By creating images which allow the eye and imagination to wander through, she evokes how we experience landscape by moving through it. Working both in the landscape, and from collected visual material about nature, Aimee explores an interplay between ‘realism’ and uncertainty, expressive of humankind’s complex ideas around nature.
A range of drawing processes investigate ambiguity, chance and expanded space in picture-making. Colour allows exploration of nature’s ephemeral light effects. Along with other generative processes including collaging, cropping and extending, colour also allows Aimee to reimagine a range of visual material about nature, sometimes approaching abstraction.
“Drawing outside enables a richer engagement with open space in places of wilderness, where there is still some sense of deep time. Leading on from this and influenced by Chinese painting, I’m interested in moving focus and boundless space in picture making, allowing the eye and the imagination to wander through, evoking how we experience landscape.
Investigating the drawn image as a mysterious kind of portal, I’m interested in using tone and spatial effects of colour to heighten illusionary depth. Using a range of materials, I allow a tactile sensitivity between media and paper surface to inform explorations of ambiguous surfaces and forms, inspired by subjects including rock, lichen, plastic and decay. Drawn marks layer time into works like strata, emulating nature’s processes, and our entangled relationship with the environment.
I’m also influenced by texts about photography, memory, and the duality of images. Through drawing, I seek ways of opening-up, fragmenting and reimagining both my own and found photographs, subverting the instant consumption of our image-saturated world.”
Aimee’s practice is grounded in drawing as a mean of orientation and immersion. Gathered together, the works here also celebrate drawing as an open-ended and versatile process of exploration - a way of enriching looking and learning.
Aimee has lived and worked in Shetland since 2016. She studied Fine Art at Falmouth University, and completed the Royal Drawing School’s Online Drawing Development Year programme in 2023. Aimee has received awards from Creative Scotland and The Artists Information Company and has been selected for Wells Art Contemporary and Figurative Art Now. She also runs drawing workshops locally, which received a Big Draw Award in 2021.
Aimee also undertakes illustration work, examples of which can be seen in the cabinets, along with sketches and development drawings.
With many thanks to Shetland Arts Development Agency, Creative Scotland and Shetland Islands Council for supporting the development of some of the works exhibited here through the VACMA programme.