Tania Rutland
Tania Rutland
Deserted Farm
100 x 100 cm
Oil on Canvas
My work for some time now has had a preoccupation with the symbolic,
referential and picturesque qualities one finds in a piece of fabric
or cloth.
My source material has been varied, not only in the obvious study
of fragments of material and needlework etc, but also a particular
type of countryside, (one that is reminiscent of cloth, of woven
material itself) an agricultural countryside e.g. a ploughed
field, a toiled pasture, fenced-in land. I have taken elements
within the landscape and reduced it down to its basic form – distilled
it. It is the push and pull between representation and abstraction that holds
my attention.
Whilst I may look at a field and see it in terms of a scene I am also
drawn to the visual uniformed references to weave and grain pattern that makes
up a length of fabric.
The key element with regards to my source material of fabric and landscape
is ‘human presence’, and the remnants of that contact. This could
be in the form of the condition of a fragment of cloth e.g. threadbare, disintegrating,
stained, worn, torn, flawed, darned, stitched. In relation to the landscape
it has been ‘humanized’, an essence of human action or habitation
imprinted onto it, a worked landscape.
Coming from a family who worked within the tailoring industry I am interested
in the registration of the labourers physical product and how this denotes
a tedious repetition, which I try to capture through an order of contained,
repetitive marks. It is the paradox of aiming to extract an emotional beauty
from something so mundane.
I have acknowledged the fact that the initial oblique references to
landscape has infact become more poignant within the work. This I feel is a
natural progression and by introducing a more defined horizon line I have effectively
rendered a more spatial organization, which has a landscape basis.
Colour
catalogue available