Heather McAteer, 'Walk With Me Through the Tall Trees'
2024
Graphite and chalk pastel on gessoed found paper
22 x 14 cm | framed: 33 x 24.5 cm (grey painted wood frame)
Artist Statement
“My drawings depict unpopulated spaces which are infused with a melancholic sense of loss and absence. Following the tradition of Irish artists in exile revisiting their motherland through their art, images connect to the fractured landscapes of my youth during the most turbulent years of the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland in terms of personal and historical memory. A limited colour palette and the tonal possibilities of graphite create a haunting, psychological darkness which plays with a dichotomy of beauty and menace. A sense of tension is continued through the intimacy of scale and a confrontational, single point perspective where the audience is drawn into my world to look and wonder, but ultimately held at a distance from participating in the scene. In a wider context this undercurrent of uneasiness and possible threat evokes the ‘eerie’ and connects to a contemporary ‘Art of the Landscape’ where a disrupted pastoral view of nature is presented to suggest anxiety, crisis and alienation.
Ideas around memory, identity, and the ambiguous nature of home and belonging inform my current series of drawings on found paper. Featuring images of where I grew up in Belfast, these works evoke a partial return to a homeland where a legacy of violence still lingers. Existing fragments of text and maps from pages of archival materials fuse my own personal mythology with other histories and narratives to present unexpected commentaries and reveal subtexts. The resulting unquiet landscapes suggest uncertainty and an ongoing negotiation with the past.”
2024
Graphite and chalk pastel on gessoed found paper
22 x 14 cm | framed: 33 x 24.5 cm (grey painted wood frame)
Artist Statement
“My drawings depict unpopulated spaces which are infused with a melancholic sense of loss and absence. Following the tradition of Irish artists in exile revisiting their motherland through their art, images connect to the fractured landscapes of my youth during the most turbulent years of the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland in terms of personal and historical memory. A limited colour palette and the tonal possibilities of graphite create a haunting, psychological darkness which plays with a dichotomy of beauty and menace. A sense of tension is continued through the intimacy of scale and a confrontational, single point perspective where the audience is drawn into my world to look and wonder, but ultimately held at a distance from participating in the scene. In a wider context this undercurrent of uneasiness and possible threat evokes the ‘eerie’ and connects to a contemporary ‘Art of the Landscape’ where a disrupted pastoral view of nature is presented to suggest anxiety, crisis and alienation.
Ideas around memory, identity, and the ambiguous nature of home and belonging inform my current series of drawings on found paper. Featuring images of where I grew up in Belfast, these works evoke a partial return to a homeland where a legacy of violence still lingers. Existing fragments of text and maps from pages of archival materials fuse my own personal mythology with other histories and narratives to present unexpected commentaries and reveal subtexts. The resulting unquiet landscapes suggest uncertainty and an ongoing negotiation with the past.”
2024
Graphite and chalk pastel on gessoed found paper
22 x 14 cm | framed: 33 x 24.5 cm (grey painted wood frame)
Artist Statement
“My drawings depict unpopulated spaces which are infused with a melancholic sense of loss and absence. Following the tradition of Irish artists in exile revisiting their motherland through their art, images connect to the fractured landscapes of my youth during the most turbulent years of the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland in terms of personal and historical memory. A limited colour palette and the tonal possibilities of graphite create a haunting, psychological darkness which plays with a dichotomy of beauty and menace. A sense of tension is continued through the intimacy of scale and a confrontational, single point perspective where the audience is drawn into my world to look and wonder, but ultimately held at a distance from participating in the scene. In a wider context this undercurrent of uneasiness and possible threat evokes the ‘eerie’ and connects to a contemporary ‘Art of the Landscape’ where a disrupted pastoral view of nature is presented to suggest anxiety, crisis and alienation.
Ideas around memory, identity, and the ambiguous nature of home and belonging inform my current series of drawings on found paper. Featuring images of where I grew up in Belfast, these works evoke a partial return to a homeland where a legacy of violence still lingers. Existing fragments of text and maps from pages of archival materials fuse my own personal mythology with other histories and narratives to present unexpected commentaries and reveal subtexts. The resulting unquiet landscapes suggest uncertainty and an ongoing negotiation with the past.”
About the Artist
Heather McAteer (b. Belfast, 1968) lives and works in Reading, Berkshire. She studied Fine Art at Belfast School of Art (1987-91) (BA) and Reading School of Art (1992-94) (MFA).
In addition to solo exhibitions at 571 Oxford Road Gallery, Reading in 2019 and 2021, her work has also been selected for a wide range of group exhibitions nationally. These include ’The Human Factor’ at Star Brewery Gallery, Lewes (2022), ‘Oxford Art Society Open Exhibition’, at SJE Cloister Gallery, Oxford (2022), ‘RBSA Drawing Prize Exhibition’ at RBSA Gallery, Birmingham (2023), ‘Winter Group Show’; at Linden Hall Studios, Deal (2023), ‘Ancient Landscapes’; at Fronteer Gallery, Sheffield (2024) and ‘A Room of One’s Own’ at Irving Gallery, Oxford (2024). In 2023 she also had a two-person exhibition, ‘Uncertain Landscapes’ (with Alex Dewart) at Flowerfield Arts Centre, Portstewart, Northern Ireland in 2023. Her new solo exhibition ‘Forests of Dreamland’ will open at West Berkshire Museum in March 2025.
Heather has been selected for numerous awards, commissions and residencies. In 2020 she was awarded ‘The Drawing Prize’ at the 139th Royal Ulster Academy Annual Exhibition, Ulster Museum, Belfast and selected for a Jelly (ACE/ National Lottery/DCMS funded) ‘At Home’ Artist Residency. In 2021 she was commissioned by the Museum of English Rural Life to make work for their ’51 Voices’ (ACE funded) Project and selected by Waldemar Januszczak as a finalist in the Save Reading Gaol ‘Freedom’ artwork competition. She is the subject of one of the twelve artists films by Reading-based artist/filmmaker Matt Hulse commissioned by Jelly, Reading in 2023 to celebrate of their 30th anniversary year. The first book of her work, ‘Forests of Dreamland’, was published by Redden Press in June this year.
