Saoirse Morgan
My paintings explore my connection with familiar landscapes. The subject of my work is my home terrain of West Wales: the landscape, the coast, the ecology. I am inspired by local colour, plant life, atmosphere and weather. I spent my childhood on small islands, surrounded by swirling tide races and wild, wind-blown seas. The starting point for my creative process comes from both my surroundings and my internal world. A sense of place, interleaved with my own emotions, memories and associations. Sketching on location is an important part of my practice, sometimes a hasty scribble in my sketchbook suffices. Colours, shapes, textures are noted with a vagueness that I enjoy -more faithful to my feeling of a place than to its actual appearance. In the studio, I allow space for exploration of materials, for chance developments and abstraction, allowing paint and torn paper to direct the process. The work develops according to its own trajectory, while staying rooted in my own experience and my connection with the Welsh landscape.
