Artist Statement

My paintings are primarily landscape-based, often shifting into abstraction. They are about unpredictable edges, and are inspired by observation, visual responses while walking through the coastal landscape. Working at the intersection of materiality and memory, I am drawn to the immediacy of fluid watercolour washes, hand-ground pigments, and the strength of dense black ink. I tend to work in series, and mostly on paper, including handmade paper. Gestural brushwork and water intermingle in my paintings, with written text woven in and around like ambulatory thoughts. The lyrical imagery wavers between the suggestion of a real place and the constant reminder of the actual painted surface. These are mostly quiet, yet graphic paintings, about this place where I now live.

Biography

Lorna Mulligan is an artist, teacher and calligrapher who recently moved to Nova Scotia from Montreal. She studied at the University of British Columbia, and at the Banff Centre. She has been teaching art for over twenty-five years, in Montreal and now here in the Maritimes. She works mostly with watercolour and ink. Her mixed-media paintings and artist’s books have been exhibited across Canada, in the US, and in Europe. Her artwork features in numerous collections. Lorna continues to paint, write, teach, and is always inspired by the chaos in nature and the beauty of letterforms.