Sandra Chin – Landscape Artist

Sandra Chin in her studio (c) David Drake

I am an artist based near Malmesbury where I work from my green roofed studio built using reclaimed wood. My work explores the landscape and the vegetation that lies within its perimeter.

I discovered drawing and painting as a teenager; my great grandfather was a painter and, I guess, my first inspiration. I never knew him in person but there were his paintings all over my grandparents’ house and nostalgia together with stories about him. Time faded memories but my love for painting remained. However, it was not until 2016 that I started painting more earnestly and I decided to do a Masters in Fine Art from which I graduated in 2018.

 These days I am greatly inspired by the works and writings of Guiseppe Penone and painters whose works I admire include Charline von Heyl and Prunella Clough, to name a couple. Books I read often influence my paintings and create context. Among my favourite authors is Rebecca Solnit. Her writings about nature, geography, the environment and walking are creatively stimulating.  

 Being outdoors, physically and mentally immersing myself in nature is important to me. Time there starts moving at a different pace and slows down; in order to draw and to paint the landscape one has to stop and to notice. 

Key themes in my work are the effect time and the elements have on the landscape and the dynamics and tensions between humanity and nature. The fleetingness and the ephemeral qualities of captured moments and the weather, the mysteries that the vegetation holds, nature as an entropic force; all this resonates with the approaches to mark making I use in my work.

 ‘In Search of Lost Time’ looks at the past and points at the future. It examines time in the context of nature, the environment and location. I searched for new ways of creating and also started experimenting with new media. In my most recent works I depict the landscape as an experience. On my walks I explored local woods and walked along streams.Narratives and the poetic are often encapsulated in trees, soil, rocks and the landscape itself. I like the way all this tells stories. 

 Humanity changed and keeps on changing the landscape.  Are we not all time travellers moving towards the future, leaving traces of our journeys behind? 

It’s time to move on and to rewild the landscape.