Poll Salach/ Joanna Installation

During a day spent walking and sketching along the West coast of Ireland in 2012, I was prompted by a friend to try and draw the feeling of this experience. Up to this point, I had always considered ‘experience’ from a figurative perspective; therefore this proposition was one which I found difficult, if not impossible. I began sketching the coast as I saw it, until the wind of the Atlantic began to blow the pages of my sketchbook and create beautiful marks. Here I had a direct record of the experience of being in this place and time, and my perspective shifted, from a projective one to processual. I became conscious of the possibility of mark making to record experiences and its capacity to develop a reciprocal relationship with my environment. Drawing influence from eastern philosophy and traditions of Chinese ink painting, I am fascinated with the potential of a given material to reveal new perspectives in nature. Although inspired by the natural landscape my work draws from every aspect of life, I allow the materials I select to speak, to become a manifestation of nature and time. The ink, oil, chalk or paper I choose to manipulate, capture the marks, texture, patterns and nature of life. I engage a process of experimentation with materials in order to facilitate these unexpected discoveries, with the quality of mark making remaining the vital thread running through all of the work. Many of the materials I use are chosen for their fragile and transient qualities. I like to layer, build, erase and repeat in an almost mediative nature. This process enables a relationship between the universe and the individual, it is elemental and primal, raising questions about our being-in-the-world.