Katharine Le Hardy has long been admired for her landscape painting. During the early months of 2020, with access to the physical world restricted, she started painting children at play, at a time when her children were home. Partially induced by memory and nostalgia this series triggered a new enquiry, an investigation into the space between the real, the past, the lost and the hopeful. In this latest series the landscape has returned. The figure has become almost fleeting, the human is suggested but is less and less emphatic. The scapes are vast and strong and emphasise the permanence of the land, the figure has become an outline, as if passing through is all that humanity will ever do amidst the wonder of nature and the majesty of the land. There was an optimistic playfulness to the 2020/21 works, their dreamlike quality emphasised by the use of a clean bright sugary palette. This remains in these new works. These paintings feel nostalgic and fantastical and yet strong and assertive in equal parts.

Candida Stevens, April 2022

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