“One never quite knows the mountain, nor oneself in relation to it.” Nan Sheperd
From the studio at the end of her garden in East London, Amelia is a long way from the rural landscapes that inspire her work. Her paintings begin with a journey to a chosen destination in the British Isles. Sometimes in the mountains, sometimes on the flats and often by the coast. There she walks with her dog and immerses herself in her surroundings. It’s not until she returns to her London home, where in the sanctuary of her studio, that she begins to paint.
She’s often asked why as a landscape painter she chooses to live in the city. But it’s precisely this space she has from her subject that is central to her process. For whilst she refers to notes and photographs taken on her travels, it is the lingering memories and sensations of her wanderings that are at the heart of her paintings.
This reflective, retrospective approach gives Amelia’s work a deeply personal quality, as she relives moments of calm and quiet in the wilderness through the canvases in her city studio. What emerges are vignettes, memories, almost meditations of her time spent alone in nature, providing an intimate insight into her relationship with the landscapes she paints, as well as conversations within herself.
Using a mix of oils, pastels and graphite her paintings verge on the abstract and create an almost dream-like depiction of the scenery. Whilst strong marks keep us grounded and connected to the materials themselves, her paintings seem to capture the essence of memory itself - that intangible quality, always slightly out of reach. There’s something mesmeric about the sense of space created and how the elements are reimagined. It seems we are being encouraged not to ask the specific location of the painting but more to allow it to inspire our own internal wanderings - with no restrictions, boundaries or answers.
Similar to the ever-changing nature of the landscapes she paints, Amelia’s approach to her work continues to evolve. She has increasingly become drawn to the quieter places on her recent travels - places that often go unnoticed. And she finds herself referencing the journeys to and from the destinations within the paintings, encapsulating an even broader sense of time and space around her experiences. And as life, motherhood and the wider world create their own particular challenges, her work has increasingly become an opportunity to find some solitude and stillness.
From the very beginning of her career Amelia was clear she would paint landscapes. Growing up in rural Sussex between the hills and sea she was afforded the freedom to roam. Perhaps it was there she first began to know herself in relation to the world, against the backdrop of a rural landscape. And by continuing to paint these places, she carries on this dialogue, searching the quiet parts of the self often unseen and unheard - for maybe it’s there that we might learn the most.
Eddie Elks, Actor & Playwright 2023