My work is inspired by the `natural world' and explores relationships between imagination and reality. I work with both realist and expressionist genres and use my style of painting to show the symbiosis inherent in our animal and plant worlds.
Nature expresses itself in a variety of ways and I have been fortunate to live in an environment where this is experienced on a daily basis. Kawhia Harbour and surrounds is rich not only in archeology, history and culture but also in direct contact with migrating birds, orca, sea & sky changes, and a changing light that provokes the senses.
My work reflects subject matter I am both familiar with and I have a deep respect for. I have always had a love for nature and in particular this part of the west coast so to use this as a catalyst for creating a group of paintings makes sense to me. I have walked, tramped, sailed, kayaked and swum in this area for many years and it never fails to reward me. I have seen this environment at all times of the day (and night) and in all climates – hence my desire to draw on this knowledge in my painting. It is what I know best.
Over the past years I have experimented with varying mediums and techniques. I enjoy working with materials that are sometimes unpredictable and random – hence the need in many paintings to combine the literal with the gestural. Working primarily with paint, ink, metallic pigment, varnish and resin, these materials inspire and exhilarate me as well as providing me with multiple possibilities. Materials can be controlled to a certain extent, however when mixed in certain ways the outcomes are much less predictable. I enjoy bringing the formal elements into a freer style of painting and to merge these as seamlessly as I can.
In all my paintings, the viewer is invited to be `drawn in' thus enabling hidden elements to be felt and seen. Painting in this way has deepened my awareness of everyday surroundings and shown me a way to sympathetically ‘capture’ objects in paint and release them through process and technique. Along with a small group of other artists I am being mentored by Dr Carole Shepheard at her Te Puti Art Studio.
Heather Sherman 2010
