Working with the body – in and out of landscapes
Shonagh Lindsay is a multi-media artist working in pastels, acrylic paint, printmaking (gelli plate, lino cut, etching and mono-printing), and recently in hand building ceramics. A major inspiration and themes in her work are embodying the human form in landscapes – imagined and real – where she wants the viewer to feel the sensuality of the body, its beauty, pain, suffering and essentially its spirituality.
Once a Buddhist practitioner, lately returned to her Catholic heritage, she believes we are both animal and spirit and it’s in finding a balance between these that we find our essential humanity.
Like most artists, colour is her medium, whether that’s the still grey of a lightly glazed ceramic or blue-green stippling across the surface of a large piece evoking the moana; or the vibrant abstract forms digitally created and lit by solar LED light that illustrate the enormity and beauty of the universe. Pastels are used for more intimate subjects as their freedom allows her to capture line quickly and expressively.
Her art heroes/heroines are eclectic: an influence being the British photographer Bill Brandt, expressionists such as Evard Munch and Egon Schiele, the religious painters Velázquez, Rubens, El Greco, and Goya, and perhaps most consistently Georgia O’Keefe. She makes art because it makes her feel joyous and alive.
