Kate Bedford
Post-Romantic Landscapes
To paint is to believe in unseen and unknown forms that reveal themselves in the very process of painting. For me, the practice of painting always carries a type of romantic sentiment in which the desire to make visible the invisible is always present. Painting is where the depths of the subconscious come into light and are exposed. I believe painting can be an ambient art in this way. This means the invisible realities of painting have a special ability to expose the invisible effects of ecological imbalance.
The natural environment and its vast expanses are where I can best relate to feelings of the sublime and the numinous. Our environment is how we make sense of the world, in space and time. From the indigenous Dreamtime paintings to the Romantic landscapes, there is a space within us to internalise our surroundings as a threshold to another space, where the mystical and irrational are contemplated.
