Artists Kathy Nettles, Ali Hirst, and Jane Hirst present “Landscape, Stems and Form”, an exhibition of recent works which reflect on their shared interest in interpreting the natural world, at the English Riviera’s Artizan Gallery. Each artist holds up their own unique lens to a world around them but, perhaps by chance, finds similarities in their experiences as they consider the tension and balance between man and nature, the beauty and decay where these two worlds cross, and the embodiment of fragility and destruction on both sides of this relationship.
In 2024, Kathy and Jane began to explore their shared interest in creating art based on their immediate local environment. For Jane, her interest was in little-known clusters of wilderness and she has settled currently into an exploration of a specific wildflower meadow owned by a poet friend living in relative isolation from the modern world. The meadow itself is sustained by a peatland further up the valley which has become the focus of the immediate project for Jane. The role of peatlands in carbon sequestering has a global impact on net-cooling and mitigating the climate crisis, with UK efforts to restore and maintain peat bogs being a prominent piece of environmental work in recent years, seeking to undo their decline at the hands of man-made activity.
The harmonious relationship between poet and nature that Jane’s work exists in proximity to, finds itself reflected in Kathy’s experience as well. Living in an old Devon farm house, she and her work bear witness to a landscape that continuously looks to return to its natural state against the efforts of human activity. Recent works have explored the duality of flora and fauna from the wild and delicate often overlooked plants, to the exuberant, beautiful hothouse versions often paraded as the ideal, a contrast of the purpose and perspective that asks us to consider the sustainability over time of man’s intervention.
Ali is the most recent addition to the collective, with Kathy and Jane having previously trained together at the prestigious Newlyn School of Arts through their Professional Landscape Mentoring Program. Like Jane, Ali finds interest in the remoteness of her locations and revealing the unseen. Her experience brings an extra dimension to the group, not only in a literal sense as a 3D sculptural artist, but also in her consideration of man-made as well as natural forms, with her work exploring a comparison of patterns and detail across a spectrum ranging from subjects like a 1950s Formica tabletop, through the stonework of a historic building, to the colours of a butterfly, or the wearing of beach pebbles. With this wide lens taking in the man made and the naturally occurring, perhaps Ali’s work offers a contrast to the experience of Kathy and Jane, showing mans designs looking to emulate nature’s own.
All three also take the experience of their work back into the landscape with recent exhibitions including a showcase of Kathy’s paintings within the stable settings of the Mare and Foal Sanctuary, and Jane and Ali’s paintings and ceramics being shown alongside textiles and poetry in the setting of local wildflower meadows.
The group shares a deep desire to learn and understand their local environment and landscape, and to share this understanding with a wider audience. For Kathy, Jane and Ali, at this moment in their artistic expressions, it is the small details and elements that make up a unique landscape which captures their attention and creates a desire to bring this individuality of a place to others’ notice.
Landscape, Stems and Form is hosted at Artizan Gallery, Lucius Street, Torquay 17th September – 16th October with an artist evening on 20th September, 18:00-20:00. For more information visit, www.art-hub.co.uk/ex/sept24 and to attend the preview head to www.art-hub.co.uk/sept24pv