SHELLEY WALES

I drive lonely sometimes forgotten roads, hike, scramble, bushwhack, get rained on, sometimes burnt and almost always eaten alive by bugs, all while trying to get to the places that call to me. Some of these places are beside a road or trail, others are so far away from signs of people that it is easy to forget that people exist. My landscapes are of these special places.  

I see these paintings as visual stories of place, reflecting an intimately candid moment in time, shared between the landscape and ourselves. Not all the moments painted are perfect or pretty, they exist somewhere between fiction and reality, like a memory shared between old friends.

Working primarily in watercolour, the paintings are based on photographs and plein air pieces I have done on location. Representational with a minimalist approach, they are full of loose intuitive mark making and simple light washes of colour that play with the flowing nature of the medium. I am enamoured with the predictable unpredictability of watercolour and how it forces me to slow down and own my choices, good and bad. In many ways I find it reflective of our interactions and effects on the wilderness I paint… a gentle reminder to be present, tread lightly and leave no trace.