Jess Hinsley

During my time at the Mawddach Residency I aimed to develop my practice, both in my plein air work and my studio work. The mountains I usually paint are much more rolling and grassy, less rugged and rocky than those of North Wales. I wanted to discover the new colours and textures and express them in my work.

It took me a little while to get my eye in, to get to know the landscape. On my first day I made lots of ink drawings, followed by some initial plein air works which I now feel are very rudimentary. Interestingly, I can see through the intense colours I used in these first paintings that I was feeling overstimulated both by my new surroundings and the excitement of being on my first residency. This is interesting to me because I haven’t noticed or linked my colour choices to my emotions before, but now looking through my work of the last few years I can see that it is in fact very influential.

As the days went on, I could see clear groupings of works emerging. Each day, with different weather and light, and also changing emotions, produced a different feeling in my landscapes. I also began to understand the landscape around me, through painting it many times and also by getting to know it on foot. I could see my colour palettes settling, my brush marks strengthening.

There were lots of new elements for me to learn to paint. I spent days painting the estuary, wanting to understand the water. I particularly loved these paintings. I experimented with painting on portrait-orientated canvas boards, to get in more of the water and sky and that feeling of space and magnitude I crave in a landscape.

After the first week I decided to focus on my studio practice, which involves painting from my feeling and memory of a place. I started this separate, indoor way of working last year because I had been unable to paint outdoors so often due to the weather. I spent some days in the beautiful studio space letting out all of my energy and love for this new landscape, in a significantly more wild and free way than I have done before. It was because of this that these works were surprising to me, but I found it exciting and enjoyable to paint so intuitively and realised that my prior studio works had been somewhat held back. I wanted to express the feeling of space, height, light, the wind and the stillness, the sound of Canada geese and oyster catchers and skylarks.

During the last couple of days of the residency, I went out painting again. I played with bringing some elements from my studio work into my plein air work, which sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t. This is a question I am moving forward with, post-residency, and will continue to play with merging the two. It may be that they are destined to be two separate ways of working. I also noticed, in my plein air works of the last day, that my brush marks were much looser and more spontaneous after having made all of those expressive studio pieces. One of my favourite paintings from the residency was made on that last day.

My time at the Mawddach residency was entirely nourishing. Spending two weeks walking and painting in that magical landscape has led to huge developments in both my art practice and myself personally. It has given me some much needed encouragement and confidence after a long period of darkness. I feel renewed, like the surrounding nature springing back into life after a long winter. I will cherish the memories and the connections I have made.

Jess Hinsley
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