Since 1999 Virginia Bodman’ paintings and drawings have examined and cross-referenced various locations; the Wiltshire landscape of her childhood, the North East coastline, where she now lives, and domestic environments past and present. Rosemary Betterton in her essay on this work, Her Dark Materials, comments on the mediation and connections that the paintings make between the landscape and the interior and to the pleasure that Bodman takes in the sensual and intellectual act of painting.
The paintings create dialogues between the natural world and the domestic interior, memory and presence, desire and reality. The paintings, which often take several years to complete, allude to an eclectic range of visual sources that include heraldry, elaborate and arcane furnishings and carry-home objects from the natural world.
Image: © Virginia Bodman. Woodlight
