About Christine Basil

 Semi-fugurative landscapes

The paintings are either a direct response to the visual source, painted en plein air, meaning they are painted from start to finish outside in front of the view with fast accurate observations in an alla prima style, ie:- fast colour mixing and application of tonal masses with no, or very little layering as the paint does not have time to dry.  The plein air work is completely innocent of any deliberate stylization.

The more resolved studio work is my way of extracting what I find moving in nature, trying to some extent to exclude reference to the manufactured world, such as buildings.  I want to distil some of the essence of the image in front of me so the paintings are 'about' the landscape and not 'of' it, even though they are to a great extent realistic, the story is about the rhythms and arrangements created by the light. This is, afterall, part of the source of my emotional egagement. In this sense I don't aim to create a 'photographic' copy and I believe that the camera lense shows it's own interprations while the eyes lense recives and experiences different ones.

The landscape has been reformed and made rigid by the activities of man, throughout history, but nature injects new life and movement again.   Agriculture helps to create examples of this process and the results can look fascinating and these are mostly what I am surrounded by, so are my main source of information.  Sometimes I will include some farm animals in my paintings, this is not to condone the meat industry, or to comment at all, they simply add to the composition but often I prefer not to as I don't want my paintings to be narrative, rather an investigation into how the light and shapes we experience through our eyes can effect our emotions.

The conversation between the elements in the 'natural' world, constantly reshapes perceived impressions and our emotional responses to this are part of this beautiful atomic dance.  To me this is harmony.  I can not think of anything better to celebrate.  For those of us who share the planet now, as the last witnesses of this incredible beauty this is my simple response to it, these pictures are my time capsule.