The culmination of almost three years of thinking and experimentation, Katharine Le Hardy’s latest body of work examines the ways in which landscapes can communicate a narrative and induce feelings of nostalgia and escapism in the viewer. Here, dramatic scenery is depicted with a tenderness and tranquility that transports us to a calm and thoughtful space; one in which memories and dreams combine, nestled in the forest’s canopy and shimmering beneath the water’s surface.

Using personal photos, memories and found imagery as sources of inspiration, the artist has created a world that is part-imagined and part-remembered, born from reality and yet fantastical in appearance. Recollections of being immersed in the Brazilian rainforest combine with a strong desire to visit the Canadian wilderness, creating a world in which lush foliage frames views of mountainous valleys. Rivers sweep through the works to carry the viewer into the landscape and, like the delicately depicted figures seen dipping their toes in the water, we sense the transience of our presence within the vastness of nature and time.

Le Hardy paints intuitively, working on multiple paintings at once and without a preconceived idea of her final composition. Using thinned oils, she uses an array of tools from paintbrush to scraper to make suggestive and gestural marks. These instinctive applications provide the impetus for subsequent layers, with many of the canvases living through several iterations, rotated and reworked as the artist draws out the scenery hidden in the marks already made. 

In this series, the artist’s distinctive, impressionistic style - distilled forms, sweeping brushstrokes and drips of paint - is amplified by the visual history we see embedded, the imprint of earlier layers remaining exposed beneath the surface. Combined with a thoughtfully limited colour palette, there is a depth and honesty that contributes to the sense of narrative within these landscapes. In this, Le Hardy captures something of the essence of experiencing nature unspoiled, be it in childhood, memory or dreams

-Isabella Joughin March 2023

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