'For me, there is a strong connection between what exists visually in the world, and what is going on in our inner worlds.'
Charlotte Brisland graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2004, and has exhibited in London, New York, Tokyo, and Berlin. Her paintings appear in museums and private collections and have won several awards, including the category award for landscape painting in the 2018 Jackson's Painting Prize. Her paintings have been featured in several publications, most recently in Floorr magazine.
Brisland says:
"[My] paintings are the dreamlike remnants of inner worlds which undulate between real and unreal. I see them as portraits; as identifiers of self and am never certain if I am the house, or the one looking at the house, or if I am the forests and mountains which contain it. The escape for me is always in the making of them; the process of creating fictitious worlds and then manifesting them in colour, negotiating the problems and bringing them to a conclusion. Moving to the worlds within is to escape the world without. For me, there is a strong connection between what exists visually in the world and what is going on in our inner worlds. As a collective these worlds are intrinsically interchangeable. A house is an echo of our need for shelter, it is the visual manifestation of it. Although it is a physical need; our wellbeing depends upon it, a place to retreat and be protected in order to create. In the making is when the world goes quiet, and there is only this other being and me in a room, battling it out in murmurs and mumbles, knowing that there are a thousand pathways, creeks and caves to negotiate."