ABOUT FRANCES LAW
I am a visual artist working with drawing, painting, print and artists books.
My practice is informed by the natural world around me.
My focus has grown and evolved from the observation of the small intimate workings of nature into an exploration of our relationship to place, and the narratives deeply embodied within the landscape.
My current work explores the archaeological and mythic undercurrents of the landscape where I live and travel to in Scotland. Walking in the landscape and connecting to ancestral voices through maps, stories and language, I work with drawing, print-making and collage overlaying textures, symbols and universal imagery in an attempt to understand the spiritual relationship between people, the land and nature.
I am attracted to ancient imagery; concentric circles, spirals, prehistoric stones and mounds, archetypical symbols that crop up in many different cultures around the world. Bearing the seeds of buried meaning, these signs often cannot be analysed or understood but possess a deep kinship to human identity stirring up memory of a lost affinity with the land, it’s rhythms and spiritual connections.
My work as an artist requires me to slow down, to be still, to be quiet and to be aware and open to my inner world and at the same time to the outer world. I work slowly and methodically and at times my practice feels like a meditation. The more that the inner and outer worlds come together and overlap the more deeply I have come to understand that there is no division between the two. I hope that my work conveys this. These inspirational words by Nan Shepherd in the Living Mountain encapsulate this for me…
I believe that I now understand in some small measure why the Buddhist goes on a pilgrimage to a mountain. The journey is itself part of the technique by which the god is sought. It is a journey into Being: for as I penetrate more deeply into the mountain’s life, I penetrate also into my own. For an hour I am beyond desire. It is not ecstasy, that leap out of the self that makes man like a god, I am not out of myself, but in myself, I am. To know Being, this is the final grace accorded from the mountain.