SPECULATIVE LANDSCAPES

‘Speculative’ — adjective

1.      Engaged in, expressing or based on conjecture rather than knowledge.

2.      Involving a high risk of loss, especially in relation to investment.

In science fiction, terraforming describes the transformation of distant planets into habitable environments through processes that are both destructive and constructive. Speculative fiction occupies a space between science fiction and realism, allowing possible futures to be imagined beyond the limits of the present.
These paintings draw on that sense of possibility. They are made through acts of intervention: paint is laid down, then activated with mediums and gravity, causing it to flow, separate and merge in unpredictable ways. The process echoes the forces that shape land itself, from tectonics and weather to erosion and human action.
The resulting works suggest places that feel both imagined and half-remembered, perhaps from another painting, a film, a book or a landscape once encountered. Some evoke cinematic or sci-fi terrains; others seem to reveal landscapes already latent within the paint, waiting to be recognised, framed and brought into view.