ANDREW HARDWICK 'SCARRED WLDERNESS' - 20/2 - 24/3/15


The exhibition represents two years of returning to known landscapes. Like those of the estuary and coast around Portishead, where I work and grew up. Also that of the moors. Exmoor and Dartmoor especially, where as a regular visitor I return for solace.

These landscapes are personal, known, remembered yet at the same time, strange and always new, when revisited.

The landscapes are embedded in my personal history; their scars, both geological and historical are joined with mine and all washed over by the power of the elements and time.

Working in the studio, I try, with conglomerates of texture, to express something of these feelings. Oil paint, acrylic paint, earth pigments, ashes, glue, plastic, hay and other found or discarded material might find a place. Ever present in the image is the sky, which I find hard to deny.

In some images, ghost-like abandoned quarries, forgotten roads and railway tracks appear. They are explained in paint, matter and old toys. A plastic jet disturbs one painting of a seemingly tranquil vast moor. It is a modern world.

Increasingly my places are upset by walkers and new nature reserves. The walkers come from new housing estates that have sanitised and replaced the post-industrial wilderness that ran alongside the estuary.

Even the old burnt-out cars have now gone, swallowed up by the ground, their lives now joining those, of earlier and more ancient artefacts below. Helping on a local archaeological dig, I found in the medieval layer, clay pipes and pottery all infused with heating oil leaking from a nearby office.

It is a landscape of strangeness and contradiction. I like to contrast the the power of this coast and the moorland wilderness I visit, by including their car parks and roads that take people into their depths. Also to show a playfulness of the modern world by producing my images out of materials that perhaps could have been taken out of a skip.

As always when visiting old friends, there are certainties mixed with surprises. Love, regret, joy, fear, feelings of loss, and time now gone, but also of renewal and celebration.


Andrew Hardwick. 2015



White Sea, Estuary, Wind and Cows
mixed media on panels . 175 x 351 cm





Abandoned Quarry, Moor and Sea
mixed media on panels . 180 x 345 cm





High Moor and Jet Fighter (Roar)
mixed media on panel . 151 x 245 cm





Old Quarry, Road, Moor and Wind
mixed media on panel . 119 x 174 cm





Late Light, Beach, Brown Estuary and Car Park
mixed media on panel . 145 x 175 cm





Estuary, Bream, Brown Coast
mixed media on panel . 123 x 172 cm





Purple Estuary, Beach and Old Railway Sidings
mixed media on panel . 154 x 175 cm





Winter, Moor, Yellow Light
mixed media on panel . 123 x 152 cm





Winter, Moor, Valley, Sunset
mixed media on panel . 121 x 152 cm





Estuary, Cliffs, Beach
mixed media on panel . 100 x 134 cm





Estuary, Cliffs and Car Park
mixed media on panel . 104 x 134 cm





Estuary, Purple Sea, Wind, Clouds
mixed media on panel . 63 x 92 cm





Wind, Cloud, Moor
mixed media on panel . 62 x 84 cm





Estuary, Wind, Grey Sea
mixed media on panel . 60 x 76 cm





Valley and Clouds
mixed media on panel . 60 x 70 cm





Late Light, Headland
mixed media on panel . 103 x 134 cm





Estuary, Coast
mixed media on panel . 60 x 70 cm





High Moor and Road
mixed media on panel . 60 x 70 cm





Dull Day, Dark Moor
mixed media on panel . 60 x 77 cm





Estuary, Cliffs and Beach
mixed media on panel . 43 x 54 cm





Beach Estuary
mixed media on panel . 41 x 51 cm





Black Estuary
mixed media on panel . 43 x 54 cm





Wind, Rain and Buried Car
mixed media on panel . 36 x 47 cm





High Moor, Grey Light
mixed media on panel . 36 x 47 cm





Wind, Rain, Wilderness
mixed media on panel . 36 x 47 cm





Autumn Purple Moor
mixed media on panel . 32 x 47 cm





Grey Sky, Dartmoor
mixed media on panel . 33 x 41 cm





Old Workings, Wind, White and Blue Sky
mixed media on panel . 33 x 41 cm





Two Horses, Moor and Standing Stone
mixed media on panel . 25 x 30 cm