Lise Temple

About Lise Temple

The abstract paintings investigate the temporal experience of viewing the landscape. The progress of the seasons and the re-working of the land by growers imbue it with impermanence. The paintings I have made portray the movement of light over land, the cycle of growth in plants and soil, the flamboyant persistence of roadside weeds. The textures, colours and patterns are undergoing daily changes. These alterations are heightened by the experience of driving, moving through the view, watching shapes shift with changing perspective. I document these changes using photography, often from a moving vehicle. By combining these images into collages, formal devices such as tonal design, alterations of scale, colour intensity of distances and overlapping of forms are employed. The collages are used as maquettes for the larger abstract paintings. Further re-arrangements of form are made during the painting process. Grasses or branches become gestures, roads are made into formal borders between shapes, skies are fragmented and used as tonal intrusions. Relationships between landscape elements are shifted as happens when the viewer moves through the landscape. When produced in this way, the paintings become landscape journeys exploring the passage of time.