Meg Buick

My painting is deeply rooted in a daily practice of drawing from life, but they are always made from memory. I see my work as a continuous dialogue with the universal human impulse to make images, in which painting the landscape becomes a way to join an ongoing visual conversation, taking place over millennia. Through motifs of landscape and the animal/human form, my work explores our collective memory, and the symbols of the archetypal subconscious . Stylistic references include ancient Egyptian tomb paintings, prehistoric cave art, paintings from the early Italian gothic and renaissance era, folk art , and 20th century European paintings . Through painting from memories, drawings, half-remembered dreams and art historical references, I attempt to pull at threads which connect us to our ancient relationship to nature and landscape. A deep exploration of the natural world has led me to acknowledge the precarious place we now find ourselves in as a species. The horse and rider motif appears frequently in my work, as well as the motif of the human figure among trees. These could be seen as depictions of a kind of lost equilibrium between humans and animals, and a sense of stewardship towards the natural world which we neglect at our peril.