Amelia Humber

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Eddie Elks, Actor & Playwright, 2023

“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.

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Professor Alan Livingston, Rector, University College Falmouth (1987-2009), 2019

Tread softly…

For the past twenty years Robert Macfarlane, the writer and campaigning environmentalist, has been exploring the intense and precarious relationship between landscape and the human heart. Macfarlane has a remarkable ability to reveal the ways in which we have engaged with, and utilised, our immediate environment above and below the earth. He encourages us to know, respect and care for our special places. In addition, of course, our widespread sense of wonder needs to be underpinned by a collective and urgent sense of responsibility.

Amelia Humber’s work is evidence of an artist with a relentless curiosity to experience and record fleeting moments of atmosphere and the unexpected abstract elements of nature. The sheer scale and physicality of this engagement presents a real challenge to the artist, with a constant need to modify and refine materials and technique in order to confront and record the gigantic elegiac landscape.

Each location visit is meticulously planned with routes and vistas carefully researched. An immediate priority for the artist is ‘to walk and enjoy the landscape, let the moment sit with me before I use memory to replicate and/or interpret’. In most cases individual works are completed in the studio utilising notes, sketches and photographs produced on location.

Often, the richly textured surface of these paintings is the result of oil paint interacting with charcoal, graphite and pastel. Although somewhat unpredictable (and risky) this final piece of artistic alchemy sometimes occurs when the paint is wet, sometimes when dry. In addition to works on canvas and board there is an evident joy in exploring the ethereal surface qualities created by various types of paper.

Amelia’s wanderlust has taken her on numerous visits to Scotland, Cornwall and Norfolk. Although the picture titles make reference to particular sites the paintings journey beyond the naturalistic specifics of place. The artistic response is so much more than mere representation. Amelia acknowledges a subtle move towards abstraction and is relaxed about the viewer ‘seeing what they want to see’. In stripping an image down to the key essentials and carefully reflecting on when the painting is finished she reveals a deep interest in ‘how and why the simplest of images can often have the most impact’

‘Bundalloch’, in Scotland, is a work that conveys an atmosphere of dank stillness and silence, suggesting an air of expectation. The fluidity of the technique matches the ever-changing light and clouds of a heavy day. Another work produced in Scotland, ‘Hourn’, is focused on a dramatic, threatening sky that fully occupies two thirds of the canvas. With minimal reference to other landscape elements the bold palette of dark colours invites a range of interpretations. The implied threat is compelling and haunting.

Whilst the works in this exhibition demonstrate an impressive and deep intensity of engagement they also tap into an increasingly universal concern for our fragile landscapes. Perhaps there is a distant echo of W B Yeats when he wrote ‘Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams’.

Amelia’s work continues to evolve, primarily in response to the critical debate she generates within herself. Although the paintings may be physically demanding to produce they are the result of a deep engagement with, and embrace of, the earth and sky in all their multifarious glory.

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Professor Alan Livingston, Rector, University College Falmouth (1987-2009), 2017

In the Landscape

As far back as she can remember Amelia Humber has had a love of wild, untamed places. Throughout her student years at Falmouth she enjoyed nothing more than being outside in the landscape. She relished the opportunity to discover hidden sites, to get to know them better and to record how the landscape changed with different light and weather conditions. Her responses were recorded in pencil sketches, pastel  drawings and photographs. This working method has been carried through to her current practice, with notes and sketches brought back to her London studio in order to complete the oil paintings on paper, board or canvas.

At the outset it is important to acknowledge that Amelia is not concerned to produce a topographical image of a specific place. Her priority is to record her response to the multi-sensory dimensions of landscape; to capture the special moment when light, colour, texture and movement come together to produce a dramatic and, at times, apocalyptic vision. This pursuit of the intangible is a significant artistic challenge requiring technical experimentation and creative risk. In addition, it demands an intense period of reflection and critical judgment in order to produce something approaching the potency of the sublime rather than simply recording the picturesque.

Inevitably, there are occasions when contemporary painters of the landscape are frustrated by casual comments that '..one can see...' a link between their work and the way artists in the nineteenth century perfected a Romantic interpretation of the English landscape. Although Amelia has studied the techniques and vision of major figures like Constable and Turner, it was a much more contemporary artist who shook her visual sensibilities and made her reflect on why she was so drawn to the landscape for inspiration. Len Tabner's elemental, semi-abstract landscapes were often painted outdoors in difficult terrain and in extremes of weather. Born in 1936, in the North East of England, Tabner's passionate work demonstrates how the English landscape can be re-interpreted to reflect the huge political and social changes of the twentieth century. Amelia was particularly impressed with Tabner's ability to convey atmosphere and raw emotion.

Since leaving college Amelia has spent extended periods of time exploring distinct geographical locations - Scotland, Cornwall, Sussex and more recently, Yorkshire. Although very different in scale and drama, each of these locations offers a rich and diverse challenge to a critical visual imagination. Favoured locations include the west coast of Scotland from Ullapool to Oban (especially the Applecross peninsula), Port Isaac, Helford Passage and The Lizard in Cornwall, West Wittering beach and surrounding coastline in West Sussex. Perhaps the link between these spectacular locations is that they offer a variety of landscapes, big skies and an almost overwhelming sense of isolation, grandeur and timelessness. Amelia's preference for remote inland locations with tracts of moorland, rivers and tributaries are further evidence of a continuing engagement with the overlooked and forgotten.

An obsession with the quality of light, a love of dark stormy weather and a real pleasure in refining the painterly quality of each work suggest an artist who will not be easily satisfied. Her sensitivity and response to different locations fuels her exploration of the forms and palette that determine the unique character of each place. As a result Amelia recognises that her visual language is in a state of constant evolution. She is attracted and excited by the idea of 'creating snapshots across the UK'.

Her painting technique is delicate, difficult to control and unpredictable. Working with very thin oil paints she builds up multiple layers of paint, with each layer needing to be fully dry before starting on the next. The essential wetness of this technique requires some works to be produced on the flat in order to control the drips and pools of paint. A palette knife is utilised for bolder areas and to build up more solid areas of colours. The different stages of the journey involved in the production of each work enable the development of a number of paintings at the same time. Amelia believes that this meticulous process 'allows the works to influence each other and encourages a continuous development'.

When I viewed Amelia's work at her first LSG exhibition (May 2016) it was obvious that here was an artist with an innate sensitivity to place, climate and terrain. When confronting individual works, particularly the larger canvases, the intensity of colour and fluidity of technique conveyed the drama of the fleeting moment. The viewpoint was central and panoramic. Never off-centre, never close up. It was a challenge for the eyes to accommodate such an all-consuming, majestic vista.

The work for this current exhibition appears to be edging towards a greater abstraction. Whilst the title of each painting signifies location, there are very few details indicating the specific viewpoint selected by the artist. Overall one is left with a profound sense of place. Memory and emotion are deeply embedded in Amelia's process of picture making.

This process is evident in 'Tempar' a brooding and meditative work. Demanding engagement, the image is barely contained within the confines of the picture frame. It recalls  memories of similar days elsewhere - foreboding and austere. There is a strong sense of stripping bare, in order to expose a human response of awe and wonder.

For some people the very act of engaging with, or viewing, the landscape has connotations of escapism and the naive pursuit of a pastoral ideal. Whilst few would argue with the spiritual benefits to be gained from the quiet contemplation of natural beauty it has to be balanced by an understanding of the raw and terrifying power of nature. For me 'Ratagan' manages to convey this strong sense of threat and expectancy. Dark, fluid, and uncertain, one can almost experience the movement of the wind and the transient light. A strong filmic quality demands the viewer's focus and concentration. It says much about the artist's vision that this mesmeric image can suggest such a diverse range of interpretations.

The work in this exhibition invites us to see, rather than just look at, our favourite locations. Amelia's work celebrates the unexpected twists and turns of being immersed 'in' the landscape rather than simply engaging through a passive, distant gaze.

At a deeper, psychological level these paintings encourage reflection on our constant need for a creative and sustainable relationship with landscape.

The artist's determination to develop her visual language, together with her pursuit of new locations, will ensure that her work remains strong and challenging. It will also continue to surprise and delight.