The Light &The Land Rachel Sargent explains how these two vital elements inspire her work. Images & Interview - Katharine Davies What makes Dorset special to you?
You talk about the quality of light a lot?
I was born and brought up in Dorset and then moved to London when I started Art College. It felt liberating and exciting living the city life but I missed the stillness and the space the countryside gives you and the opportunities to experience nature and the elements in a more profound way. I started walking around Clapham Common pretending it was the country but I wasn’t fooling it or me! It needn’t have been Dorset necessarily but I do love the feel of timelessness and remoteness it has in places.
What fascinates me is how you can walk along the same length of hill, for instance, day after day and year after year, and it never looks or feels quite the same because of the way the light changes. It is this changing quality of light against the permanence of the landscape that is central to my work. The emerging and fading light at the start and end of the day can often be the most dramatic so I like walking at these times especially.
Where else do you find inspiration? What are you expressing through your work? I like to read about other people’s experience of the natural world and I enjoy nature poetry as it can create a lot of visual imagery. Apart from the landscape the other thing that drives me to paint is the sheer love of paint, surfaces, colours and textures. In some ways I could happily be an abstract art-ist. I love looking at surfaces that are a combination of random colours and textures like rusting metal, peeling paint, posters pasted on top of each other that are torn revealing colours and shapes underneath.
I think my work is my way of trying to rekindle the feeling I have when I am out walking. Being aware of my natural surroundings is when I feel most myself. It gives me a chance to evaluate life and the universe and put things into a better perspective. My painting is an affirmation of what is important to me and a way of saying “ Hey….have you seen this? Have you seen the way the light bounces off the wet land after a thunderstorm or how the wind creates moving patterns of shadows in the woods…?” arkadia magazine
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