artists register

Statement

 "With a landscape subject matter that is often intensely familiar to her Joanna Brendon's bold abstracting way of working creates paintings rich in dramatic feeling and entirely mysterious in character."        Nicholas Usherwood    Curator/Editor

In 2013, at an exhibition in Oxford,  a three year old asked me:  “ Do you use magic in your pictures?”

Artist’s Statement 

My principal interest is the exploration of a sense of place.  I aim to evoke a response to the experience of being there, rather than to make topographic references, so that the work is essentially about a place, rather than of it.  I am fascinated not only by the ever-changing image of moving water, but by the point where it hits the land – liquid meeting solid, soft meeting hard.   Another theme I endlessly explore is trees – often not in full leaf, but showing the bare branches of winter with their beautiful fractal geometry.   

My painting process can be deceptively lengthy and can involve many layers; some are clearly revealed, some glimpsed, some hidden.  The pulling and pushing, adding and subtracting is integral to the visual history of each piece.   I aim to maintain energy and freshness, and sometimes a degree of ambiguity.   I always work in series, allowing one piece to inform another which in turn redirects me to the first, as I look for the appropriate ‘chord clusters’ of colour.   Eventually, I feel that the series has run its course, like the turning of the tide.

The practice of working with wax and collage developed when I had extremely low vision and felt a need to include a tactile element into my working practice.  (Somehow it never occurred to me that hot wax might not be the most practical medium in the circumstances!)  I continue to use the technique since a life-changing eye operation and find it lends itself well to abstraction.

Charcoal drawings are an important part of my practice, sometimes leading to oil paintings of the same subject, sometimes not.  I find that the medium lends itself well to the freedom of action and I enjoy the challenge of achieving depth purely through tonal variation without the use of colour.  

Biography