In her first show Sussex for many years Elizabeth Butler explores the landscape of Parham Park and the South Downs. She moved into a studio on the Parham Estate two years ago. Her daily walks through the park and along the South Downs from her home in Amberley have inspired many of these works. Butler uses the landscape as a starting point for her abstract compositions. These are contemplative, poetic works which celebrate the creative mystery of nature and its endless renewal and regeneration. While they may take a particular incident as a starting point they are a distillation of remembered scenes, particular atmospheric effects and her own emotional response to them at the time which inspire a sense of awe and reverence in the viewer.
There is a sense of fragmentation running through much of this work echoed in the shifting abstract patterns found in the natural landscape. It stems from her mother’s death and having to sort through the family house in Byworth where she grew up and where her mother had lived since 1947. Butler spent months piecing together letters and documents like a giant jig-saw puzzle discovering aspects of her family history and even relatives she had known nothing of. Two of the paintings in the exhibition "Getting to the Bottom" of things refer directly to this experience. |
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