My practice explores my family history through exploring family photographs, place and memory. This work has focused on my father’s side of the family and his childhood in relation to the Derbyshire landscapes in which he grew up. My father was bought up by my grandmother, after his father passed away when he was young. My grandmother still lives in the same neighbourhood, just a ten minute drive from the Peak District. My work has focused on a series of small-scale acrylic landscape paintings on canvas, of views of the Peak District, where I have walked with my relatives when I was a young girl. These is then developed into digital works which have been heavily influenced by the idea of ‘deep mapping’ which “attempts to record and represent the grain and patina of place through juxtapositions and interpenetrations of the historical and the contemporary” (Pearson and Shanks, 2001. pp.64-65) This meant that the works are also exploring memory and nostalgia as a concept. I used parallels between photoshop processes and deep mapping, layering my paintings with original photographs of my grandmother and her husband when they were young, as well as photographs of my ancestors. I have also been inspired to think about folk tales and other prominent scenarios, fictional and real, that link to the landscapes I have portrayed, for example, Jane Eyre’s Thornfield Hall, inspired by North Lees Hall, Chatsworth house (a favourite spot to visit when visiting my grandmother) and the village of Eyam, which was hit with the plague during the 1600s. The four works selected portray a range of these ideas.  

Image 1: Florence Foster. Wendy. Digital Photoshop Manipulation. 90 cm  x 60 cm. 2020. 

Image 2: Florence Foster. My Father: Childhood Revisited. Digital Photoshop Manipulation. 29cm x 40 cm.  2020. 

Image 3: Florence Foster. The Veins of Place. Digital Photoshop Manipulation. 29cm x 42 cm. 2020. 

Image 4: Florence Foster. The Places we once walked together. Digital Photoshop Manipulation. 29cm x 42 cm. 2020. 

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  @ flo_paints_