MARK MUNROE-PRESTON
MARK MUNROE-PRESTON 
"I have spent the past decade or so out walking the dogs with a camera, being so lucky to have such amazing varied landscapes in East Sussex I have been spoiled for choice where to go and years of being out and about at dawn have given me a large catalogue of images to draw on when creating my artworks. Initially the pictures were not taken with this project in mind, just fulfilling the need to record what is visually interesting around me. Now I look at things differently and am searching for scenes that work well as landscape art, whereas originally, I was selecting the strongest images from my archive as the start point for the artwork.

The composition is very important and I am always conscious of the structure within the photographs I take because it is the skeleton on which the picture hangs. I find shooting only square format really helps with constructing strong pictures and is a habit that has stayed with me from when I used to shoot landscape photos on an old twin-lens Mamiya C33.

Sometimes the tree I am photographing is amazing and cries out to be included in an artwork but the surrounding landscape, for whatever reason - background, weather, etc. makes it difficult to create an interesting literal interpretation of the scene. In these instances, I take a more design-inspired approach and construct a landscape for the subject.

All my pictures begin as straight photographs which I first break down into basic shapes before I build them back up again using other images, objects, textures, paintings and sketches. All of these elements bring back detail and definition to the image while not actually being the original photograph, which I might use as masks to help with the definition. In this respect, it is like ‘painting’ and I am using these layers of images as my brush strokes to build up the final artwork. The colours are often based on the natural colours of the original scene with a tweak to get across the atmosphere I want to get over to the audience. 

There are a few that are a bit more ‘out there’ colour wise and I find the bold vivid contrast images work better with the subject matter of those pieces, rather than the more subdued tones I use in the softer pictures. For a long time, it feels like modern life has been breaking the link between mankind and nature and this is probably at the heart of people's willingness to destroy the planet they need to survive. I would like to think that by exposing people to the beauty of the world through art it might encourage them to think about it and its fragility and not take it for granted. The names of my pictures are the latitude and longitude values for where the original photos were taken. I hoped that if people enjoyed the pictures then it might inspire them to go out and find the location, maybe even go further and explore their local countryside. 

Landscapes without trees don’t really feel like landscapes to me, they are such an integral part of our perception of the world about us. I feel drawn to these incredible organisms, which can be diminutive, delicate, monumental, sculptural and have spiritual qualities. They provide so much for us, food, shade, air and protection. They have the ability to survive in the harshest conditions. Living such long lives it seems as though they become extensions of the land itself and that is why they have that connection with the ground in my artworks."

Mark Munroe-Preston
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