Today, we are even more aware of the importance of being outside and enjoying the natural world around us. By interacting with it, spending time in it, experiencing it and appreciating it, we can reap the benefits of feeling happier and healthier as a result. Recollections of these special times and captured moments feed into our shared memories and our dreams.
Through the ‘Discarded Dreams’ series, Brian Neish explores the idea of re-imagining dreams of landscape that seem to be common to us all. He originally devised the series in 2019, in preparation for an exhibition of small paintings due to be hung at the Ivy Brown Gallery in New York in 2020. This was at a time when no one had any idea of the unforeseen impact that Covid that would have on us all.
Brian scavenged local charity and thrift shops for second-hand frames that contained images of landscapes that had clearly once adorned people’s walls or shelves, pictures that presumably meant something to them and that they had valued. He decided to breathe new life into these discarded frames by creating images of mainly woodland landscape in paint on board. He was influenced by the original motifs they once contained while featuring ‘stills’ from dreams he still has. These dreams are derived from memories of personal experiences in landscape, or memorable photographs, or even scenes from films that never seem to fade.
Usually a painting is only framed once it has been completed. However on this occasion, Brian set each of the old frames onto fresh board before starting to paint his dreams and memories of landscape. As he created the paintings the paint started to cover the frames as well. For him, “Colour and texture from the painted images on board spilled out onto the wooden frames in a gesture as though to integrate and embrace them.”
A selection from the Discarded Dreams series