Lise Deadman

Over the last couple of years I have had an on-going project, based on my granddad’s watercolour paintings, which he started when he retired. I have been studying them since he died a few years ago at the age of 97. My granddad told me he that as a child he had lessons from the water colourist, William Henry Allen (1863-1943) for painting lessons at Stranger’s Corner, Farnham . In later life he would often paint buildings from his youth by memory. I have visited the locations of places in his paintings (local to my home) to see if the buildings still exist and to match them against his remembered images. Then, having taken photographs at these locations, I compared them with the remembered images. I took the work of my granddad a stage further by looking at ‘memory’ in others and myself. First drawing an image from my own memory of a place or building, I then drew a comparative image directly from either a photograph or direct viewing the actual object. I feel that producing images from the mind’s eye is a fantastic way of adding subjective value to an image. This year I have had a break from the above project, deciding instead to look at a completely different subject. The project I chose was on endangered species. Focusing on animals in threat of extinction mainly due to the behaviour of the human race. The project was inspired by a documentary on the illegal ivory trade. It had a huge impact on me. I felt angry and disgusted, by the fact that elephants' lives are wasted by simple human greed. It has been a very deep and emotional subject to research, I wanted to avoid the stark depictions of killing off animals with such brutality. I didn't want my work to reflect that side of things. Instead I chose to depict something of the beauty of these animals, but also depicting them as tusk-less or hornless - suggesting incompleteness or subtly hinting at loss. Choosing to paint animals has been a new experience. It was challenging to show my subject matter in this medium. It has not been important to me that viewers are given a stark message as to the subject of the paintings. They must draw their own conclusions. My studies are of three species of animal: the African elephant; the black rhino; and all species of endangered turtle. I have completed a series of paintings entitled ‘The Last Ones’. Each animal is small, and completely alone in an otherwise blank space. My aim is to evoke a feeling of isolation. The viewer is lead to question the proportions of the nothingness, the fading, the absence, and the loss.