Sigrid Holmwood’s luminous paintings of pastoral landscapes, rural scenes and Swedish peasants are complex and intriguing.
Holmwood makes studies and paintings of actual happenings, people re-enacting the lives and practices of rural peasants and farmers, from open-air folk museums in Sweden to Tudor re-enactment societies in Britain, Holmwood herself crossing from observer to participant.
Sigrid Holmwood takes on the mantle of peasant painter demonstrating traditional painting methods by using authentic pigments. Contemporary luminous paints are mixed with traditional pigments and mediums; egg tempera, sour milk, pine resin and birch leaves etc to create an effect that is simultaneously historical and contemporary. Holmwood thoroughly researches these pigments and sources, grinds and infuses them herself.
The painting process is as important to Holmwood as the subject matter which is evident in the appearance of the paintings; they have a lustre and depth that comes from careful attention to paint and glazing, authentic 18th and 19th century pigments overlaying electric fluorescent colours, producing pastoral scenes that radiate a 21st century energy.
This is Sigrid Holmwood’s first one-person show. It will comprise around 20 dramatic new paintings most of which were based on drawings made in Skansen – a Swedish Folk Museum set up in the 19th Century.
