Inspiration is all around. As a source of inspiration in the use of colour and connection, it is the both the phenomenological aspects of light, the ambiguities between our perception of shadow and reduced visibility, which produce subtle colouring, and the minutiae and often over-looked poignancies that Adriane Strampp finds most engaging.

Falls the Shadow was the first of these paintings. The ambiguity of distance, and what might be solid form and what might be shadow intrigued Adriane. In investigating further the perception of distance, light and shadow, she began to experiment with the introduction of shadows created by objects other than those predictably present in the landscape, in an attempt to create a sense of doubt or unease, drawing the viewer into the picture ‘space’, to question the perception of what is in front and what might be behind.

The landscape paintings such as Falls the Shadow of the ‘Stillness’ group led to the consideration of other moments of ambiguity in time, of having a sense time of being paused or ‘frozen’ momentarily. The choice of animals as subject seemed the natural progression, and Adriane was particularly attracted to the vulnerability of seemingly heroic animals such as horses, hares and stags, animals which usually appear distant, wary or cautious, and who by nature have moments of stillness.

Adriane was later intrigued to find that she shares this interest with the late conceptual artist Joseph Beuys, who was also drawn to horses, stags, hares, and swans.

Mimesis was the first of the animal paintings to follow on from the landscape works, and explored not only the sense of stillness and shadows, but also the effect of the materiality of surface in relation to the subject. Working with a limited palette, thin washes of colour and minimal oil in the solvents, she was able to create transparent layers of multiple images where the image and its shadows shifted according to the position of the viewer. Aided by a trip to Venice in 2009 and the opportunity to closely observe the work of Tintoretto, she learnt some of the transparent layering techniques of the Renaissance artist, and how to make almost a transparent ‘black’ from the use of primary colours. Added to her own experimentation in balancing painting mediums, the surface quality of Adriane’s work has taken on a new dimension.