Jill Campbell: Fell Abstractions

31st January - 16th March 2019
Jill Campbell: Fell Abstractions

Jill Campbell’s expressive paintings are inspired by the striking landscapes of the North East. Almost every day, she walks through the ancient mining area of Cockfield Fell, absorbing the colours and textures that the landscape produces through changing light and weather.

Her abstracted paintings are a result of exploring the interplay between what is seen and what is felt about the landscape, combining recognisable outcrops of the land with a synesthetic relationship to colour and form. There is a clear fascination with the Fell’s strange, other-worldly yet natural shapes, defined by the morning shadows and framed by big dramatic skies. Its pools, pathways, mounds, dips and curves are her motifs, rendered through abstracted forms.

Whilst the paintings on show were partly a reaction to the wonderfully hot summer of 2018, her location of the historic Cockfield Fell has been described as "one of the most important early industrial landscapes in Britain", and is England’s largest Scheduled Ancient Monument. In addition to four Iron Age settlements, there is evidence within the landscape of coal mines at least as early as 1303, medieval agricultural field patterns, and centuries of quarrying activity, all of which have altered the land and scenery of the fell, abstracting it through layers of historical industry.

Campbell’s works are built up gradually through layers of drawing and paint, using loose and gestural marks to create a harmonic balance from which a painterly world emerges. Whilst these images operate through a lens of personal interpretation, her work is a visceral and true celebration of these Northern landscapes.

Overriding this approach is the idea that, for Jill, reality is not enough, and at the centre of her practice lies an interest in finding ways to convey this.

 Jill graduated from Sunderland University with a first class degree in Fine Art in 2014, and has since exhibited throughout the UK, including the 2017/18 New Light Art Prize, the 2018 BEEP Painting Biennial, the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists Prize Exhibition, the Ferens Open 2018 and the Great North Art Show.

Images:
Fell III, Acrylic on canvas
Fell X, Mixed media on canvas
Fell II, Mixed media on canvas
© the artist

All works are available for sale