These particular works arise from the artist’s project ‘Holbrook Hands’, engaging directly with the lives of individual people in her village of Holbrook, Derbyshire, and exploring their varied ideas of ‘community’.
After several months of collecting their handprints and gaining their responses to a simple questionnaire about their hands and community, she began to respond artistically. This project is ongoing and will continue to develop. For regular updates go to “Holbrook Hands” Facebook page.
The paintings are what she terms ‘Handscapes’, individual palm prints embedded in their unique, imagined biographical landscapes. Using oil paint, a new medium for her, was a revelation, its malleability and ’mind of its own’ when mixed in certain ways, particularly supports the individuality and intrigue of this narrative.
Whilst studying the individual handprint, she also surprisingly became captivated by the negative space created by the palm. It suggested shapes and images that seemed to relate to the character of the individual. From their biographical information and what she learnt about them, the palm print became the motivation for the imagined ‘landscape’, so revealing in a different way, the individuals behind the hands.
