Any artist who tackles the subject of landscape is faced with a dilemma in terms of how to process the extensive visual information before them.
Attempting to faithfully replicate every physical feature is one approach - thereby placing the artist squarely into a well defined genre. Coming up with contextual alternatives, though, can be just as challenging - if not more so.
For Sarah Walker, this decision-making process is heightened further as she is based on the Beara peninsula - a particularly seductive part of the Irish landscape.
Her strategy has been to look selectively at her surroundings and incorporate areas of interest into her paintings as isolated motifs. These include clumps of vegetation, reeds, flowers, lichen, a tractor etc. Their presence is so discrete that at times they appear to be part of a minimalist abstract composition, floating like islands on a sea of harmonious sfumato.
Walker builds upon the way in which these motifs attract the eye by removing all reference to landscape and focusing exclusively upon textural detail. These smaller, purely abstract works connect well with the larger pieces but have their own identity. These are tactile surfaces, but are also dense and impenetrable ones, where paint is applied in thin barbs and then masked behind a layer of flat colour.
The relationship between the two types of painting is an intriguing one. The detailed sections of the larger paintings stimulate the curiosity for closer examination - this is then denied by the bristling, strange surfaces of the smaller pain tings.
Continues until April 25th