Gillian McDonald
My sketchbook is the starting point of it all which is why drawing is so important to me and why I never use a camera. I need the discipline of that intense contact with nature to then move away into invention and discovery, to move away from simple description and into my interpretation in terms of design. I like to take the subject apart and to reassemble it in terms of colour, shape, plane, texture, and line. This is where collage is critical: it allows me to play with the abstract qualities of the North Pembrokeshire landscape so that I am not just representing it but putting it into an arrangement that says what I feel about this amazing place of sea, stones, earth, and man-made marks that come from the very landscape itself. This is my personal take on what I am seeing and how I feel I am evolving a san artist, constantly experimenting and pushing stylistic boundaries in order to render the sensations and feelings I am perceiving into fresh and exciting ways of seeing.