Back Country Paintings
As an explorer of mountains myself, what I noticed whilst climbing and ski touring in the Alps and Himalayas was the quality of the light in the rare-ified atmosphere. This feeling is something I wish to communicate on canvas to my viewers. The particular language of seracs, arêtes, corniced ridges and rime ice is what I have tried to depict in my new work. As a mountaineer myself I feel more able to truthfully reflect upon my experiences once back in the studio. This desire to capture in oil the transience of glaciers, as basically water trapped in a temporary state is what my current work is preoccupied with.
I prescribe whole heartily to the restorative effects of loosing ones self in the sublime expanses of natures inner realms. My work comes out of a feeling of loss, when I return from wandering the hills and primeval forests. Their for I try to capture them on linen, not in reality but in an idealized, almost unblemished way. I choose to depict mountains and forests in all their majesty. These are citadels shrouded in mist and protected from the world like bastions of freedom. Not the ground down desolate places that they are fast becoming due to globalization.
I have chosen to blatantly glorify the out door lifestyle in my melodramatic pictures and sweeping romance vistas. The work is in part, imagined lost scenes from such films, where due to the lapse of time, people fade in and out of existence but the forest remains. This transience of being reflects my own experience of nature where ones self existence is not permanent and can be lost without any warning. These transformations are set against the backdrop of unblemished alpine vistas.
My work is composed from hybrid images clipped from past memories/ places I have visited or experienced. This imagery is painted on the canvas using much the same techniques and processes of cinematic matte paintings where actual paintings were filmed to extend a scene or mountainscape whilst layering the actors actions over the top.
Now, at the beginning of the new millennium, a new flight from reality is under way, a new yearning for an intact world (hardly surprising in view of the present economic crisis). One thing is clear: the idyllic landscapes of past times are in touch with people’s dreams. They still spirit us away into worlds, which are better than the world we live in.
Alex’s new paintings can be seen on his website www.alexanderheaton.co.uk
And he will be showing work in Berlin in March 2010 at Rise Gallery in the exhibition entitled – Happiness Machines.
www.riseberlin.com/exhibitions.php
