Felicity Truscott’s vivid charcoal drawings capture a sense of the fragile interaction between the human observer and the landscape of which they are a part.

She renders the fleeting touch of earth and sky, the sensuous curve of a hill, the warmth of sunlight and the chill mystery of shadows. There is both strength and extreme delicacy in her application of charcoal in an ever shifting dance between surface and material.

Truscott explores the drama and lyricism that can be achieved in her chosen medium. Her mark making is sometimes vigorous, at other times so delicate it seems as if the charcoal dust has been breathed onto the paper. Use of a gesso ground enables her to incise the surface, unveiling previous layers, much as the landscape itself bears the scars of past activity.

Treading the fine line between landscape and abstraction her images retain a sense of place but take off into an exciting dialogue with the medium itself. The final image is a confluence of the external motif, the artist’s emotional and intellectual reaction to it and her exploration of the possibilities of the various materials at her disposal.

The images unfold slowly before the viewer with something of the pace of geological time. This is landscape drawing as a form of contemplation.

Colin Pink

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Blackboard series: Exposed Edge. 600mm x 600mm 2014