Jeremy Gardiner’s artistic excavation of the geology of landscape is shaped both by human activity and by the forces of nature. Gardiner interprets, through his painting and printmaking, a variety of landscapes that contain the marks and secrets of their own distant formation, giving them a unique, contemporary depth and beauty.
I prepare the sheets prior to painting by cutting shapes from my composition and combining them to create a paper relief.
I then paint the surface, using washes as well as areas of thick impasto to further embellish the relief surface.
I also fill and skim the surface with jesmonite. This gives the painting a feeling of recession by the use of hard edge forms and accents against blurred shapes and areas.
I then engrave the surface with my line drawing and use gum arabic to slow the drying time of my watercolour washes.
This also increases the transparency and creates greater luminosity of colour.
My process requires the watercolour to dry at interim stages and I move from one painting to another as the drying takes place.
