Richard Pomeroy
Richard Pomeroy lives and works in Bruton, Somerset. This print is from a body of work that explores the relationship between man and landscape – concentrating on the Somerset Levels and Glastonbury Tor. That work followed a series of paintings that he made around 2008 about which he wrote:
These new paintings overlay physical impressions of myself…..with the wildflowers of local Somerset hedgerows, creating a juxtaposition that highlights the disjointed relationship between nature and man.
I use anything – hands, shirts, bundles of leaves – to move the background paint around the canvas to create the right mood/context for the subject painted on top. The hedgerow flower paintings draw attention to the brutality of modern farming, and tractor tyre tread marks in the mud illustrate that dramatically with an instantly recognisable and powerful calligraphy. To make the ‘Fall’ paintings I fall or lower myself onto wet paint, reminiscent of Jasper Johns and Yves Klein. The resulting image – part x-ray, part memory, part theatrical performance – forms the backdrop to flowers and insects. These images evoke Adam’s fall from the Garden of Eden, Icarus, and the ‘jumpers’ who fell from the Twin Towers on 9/11. Yet despite the troubled evocations there is also a sense of ecstasy, of man plunging into nature and art, an echo of the seventeenth century poet, Andrew Marvell’s sensuous lines: –
‘Ensnared with flowers, I fall on grass…
Annihilating all that’s made
To a green thought in a green shade’
Richard Pomeroy, Bruton, Somerset, 2008
