Gold and purple flowers seem to appear from among the reflections in a pool of still water

Michela Griffith Artist

Fluid evocative and abstract: water, reimagined

My visual interpretations of nature are fluid; they offer an opportunity to pause, to question what it is that we see, to each find our own answers amid the ambiguity, and perhaps a place of ease.

Now, more than ever, the world seems less clear, less certain. This precarity inevitably finds a way into our lives, and as artists it affects what we make and enjoy.

Making is a way to engage with place; creativity stills the busy mind and restores equilibrium. It’s a chance to lose yourself in the beauties and auras of a regenerating place and its nature. My place happens to be in North East Scotland but it could be on your doorstep; the themes are universal.

Water began to shape me in 2012; it has fundamentally changed my practice and vision. Now I’m extending the experimentation in camera that marked the subsequent decade to output, mixing media and creating works that are as individual as the moments we spend in nature and the memories that we return with. I walk to the same small quiet places throughout the seasons. Where nature has begun to reclaim man’s marks amid birch, pine and moss I find a natural palette of soft colour with seasonal pops of bright, and reflected lines that bend but don’t break. As the pools rise and fall, boundaries break down. It’s a chance to breathe, to rest, to assimilate. My work has become quieter as a result and less explicit; blur has become a means of inviting permeability, of buffering, of regaining stasis and it increasingly accords with my own uncorrected view of this earth.