End of the Degree

Artist’s Statement

Tristram Ellam-Bell

Unit 9

I situate my practice within the wider context of landscape painting as a genre and describe it as socially aware romanticism. My work celebrates the history of England and other European nations but also attempts to impart some unease about that history.

These historical themes continue to inform my work and in order to take them further in September last year I rented a bungalow on the south coast and spent my time walking through the landscape, taking photos and doing in situ sketches. This, and a visit to the Netherlands in August to carry out similar research there, provided the impetus for the paintings I produced during this final stage of my Degree.

Continuing a materials theme, that I established in Stage 1 I used second hand canvases and painting boards to pursue experimenting with homemade innovative grounds, settling on a mixture of crushed chalk from the cliffs on the south coast where I went in September, mixed with acrylic primer and while I enjoyed working on surfaces that involved an element of struggle and presented a few practical difficulties, I decided to use pre-stretched new canvases for my final pieces.

  

Below are the paintings and drawings that will make up my Degree.

These works were all produced in the last 9 months and represent the bulk of my studio practice for this stage. Measurements and medium and titles of these pieces can be found in both my Visual proposal and at my Flickr account: https://www.flickr.com/photos/154694225@N07/