FLORA MCLACHLAN
Flora’s imagery springs out of her sense of the mythical and archetypal elements of landscape, as found in the storytelling tradition. She is fascinated by how the residue of our childhood reading affects our emotional connection with observed landscape. In her work, images from her everyday life and her memory are gathered and bound into a tentative personal mythology that weaves her to the world and to other people. The motif of the transformative quest in medieval romance informs her work with a sense of travelling outwards into the wild forest, and inwards into the mysteries of the self. Her work is steered by the nature of her materials, whether local charcoal, copper plate, wood, or lithographic stone. The work can suddenly leave paper and become expressed in film, sculpture, or event. She also uses invented forms of divination and ritual walking and dreams up magical happenings to explore the imagery she is using. A suggestion of reaching for the Other is always present in her work.
AWAKENING, stone lithograph, 54 x 76 cm
CATTLE GRID AT MIDNIGHT, gorse charcoal, 30 x 41 cm
HEATHFIRES, stone lithograph, 74 x 52 cm
RIDE A WILD GOAT, willow charcoal, 30 x 41 cm
JUST PLAYING, willow charcoal, 30 x 41 cm
SPELLS, stone lithograph, 74 x 52 cm
SPIRIT TRAVELS, oil on canvas, 75 x 75 cm
THE GOOSE GIRL, oil on board, 40 x 44 cm
POSSESSION II, etching, 54 x 76 cm
In Which I Go Hunting, video, 4 mins