The Beautiful Jim Key Picks the Letter P

My work is about shared spaces.  I grew up in rural England and was aware of sharing the land with other species of flora and fauna.   Having freedom to roam I had encounters with birds, farm animals, dogs, cats, rats, insects and parasites, as we crossed each other's spaces.   I observed the constant ebbing and flowing of the seasons and growth as farmers re-drew their boundary hedges and the edges of sowed fields and then nature redrew hers.  This is a tiny echo of the much bigger processes going on worldwide.   

 

As a young adult, after a decade living in cities, I returned to rural living and saw anew the spaces and the things I had taken for granted as a child.   I am inquisitive about this relationship between the domestic, the tame and the wild, and about how other artists and craftspeople have described it in their work.  This relationship exemplifies the biggest question of our time; how we share with other humans and other flora and fauna the resources of our planet.   By placing the non-human in an unexpected position within a composition my intention is to flip the old adage ‘out of sight, out of mind’.  To extend that feeling of the unexpected I use colour and brush work to create a sense of the uncanny or strange.

Aquatint

24x30cm

Unframed

Edition of 10