When Britain was plunged into lockdown in March 2020, Oxford-based landscape artist Elaine Kazimierczuk turned to social media to find inspiration for her work. Spring is normally a busy time for Elaine, who is renowned for colourful semi-abstract landscape paintings of wildflower meadows. Suddenly unable to get out into nature to make preparatory sketches and take photos, Elaine turned to Twitter and Instagram for help. She invited members of the public to send her photos of their own wildflower hotspots, using the hashtag #paintmymeadow.
Elaine received a huge variety of photographs from all over the UK and the world and she spent the summer creating a series of 18 expressive semi-abstract oil paintings based on her favourite images from those submitted. As usual, the work conveys Elaine’s lifelong love of the natural environment. In it she shuns botanical accuracy in favour of bold colour and her own very distinctive vocabulary of rhythmic mark-making and stylised motifs.
The artist’s intention is to convey the essence of a place and this series is no exception, immersing the viewer in the radiant beauty of an English poppy field, the lushness of a Northern Irish mountain, the drama of a windswept Scottish hillside, the riotous colour of a Welsh meadow and the intense heat of the Australian sun.
The Paint My Meadow exhibition took place at Magdalen Road Studios (74-77 Magdalen Road, Oxford OX4 1RE) from Sunday 6 to Sunday 13 December 2020, from 1 to 6pm daily.
If you couldn’t make the exhibition in person, it is brought to life in a series of videos on Gala Fine Art’s YouTube channel.
