Charlotte Ward

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land marked 2024

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Charlotte is an artist concerned with the documenting of the transient and the passing of time. Exploring and questioning the relationship humans have with the land, her practice explores the imprints, traces and intangible marks exchanged between them.

 

Working within the field of expanded drawing, Charlotte views drawing as a subtractive process, constructing dynamic drawings in leather, paper and light, recording fleeting moments of activity. These quiet works respond to their surroundings; the viewers physical presence and first-hand experience of simultaneously observing and moving around the work is integral.

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Charlotte’s Interdependence series of drawings on paper explore the invisible connections that bind. Questioning the value we place on things by shunning expensive papers, she begins with a plain sheet of A4 copier paper and folds in sequence until it results in a palm sized wad of layered paper; the whole reduced to one rectangular surface with many layers compacted underneath. Much like the land, this paper landscape echoes what it is like to be human; only the outer façade visible, the internal layers hidden, impacted by time.

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The act of perforating paper is a destructive act of taking away, leaving the trace of human action, emphasising the visible marks of existence and the forgotten liminal spaces in-between. The drawings explore memory and influence; the individual perforations, reference points left upon the landscape.

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Unfolding and separating the layers is a delicate process; a laying bare. The bonds resist separation and tear, needing cajoling and reassurance that the connection with their counterpart can be survived. Whilst these links are now broken, the scars are still visible and the impression the initial perforations leave; still there. A reflection of absent presence.

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Charlottes series of timed leather drawings

document the passage of time, recording shadows cast by the willowy limbs of the Silver Birch. Initial drawings are made on paper, either drawing continually as the sun passes overhead or in rigorously timed intervals, she traces the unnoticed; not the tangible object but a reflection of it, the space it holds within the world. A visual indication of the passage of time.

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She then turns her attention to committing her observations to Oak Bark Tanned leather. In contrast with the fleeting nature of the shadow, the individual accumulation of embossing each mark by hand is time consuming and meditative, each line of dots becoming a journey, a daily entry, a progression of time. The physicality of embossing outside within the landscape is also important; droplets of rain, intensity of sunshine, songs of the Skylark, get woven into the work as each mark is committed to the surface. One moment of pressure held between the artist and the material; the transference of energy.

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Click images for details and if you are interested in any of Charlotte Ward's work

please enquire below.​