Artist
Kit Boyd
Exploring our relationship with nature and landscape, Kit’s detailed etchings find refuge in the pastoral and surreal, leading you down lanes into dreamlike landscapes. He follows in the British romantic tradition, being strongly influenced by Samuel Palmer and the Neo-Romantics of the 1940s. He also works in collage and painting.
From rural idylls to strange metamorphoses evolving from my mind’s eye, my work aims to channel the mysterious spirit of place. Green men emerge from trees, lone figures find refuge in lanes, and plantlife undergoes metamorphoses.
I’m interested in the sense of mystery that lies beyond our surface appreciation of the world, the moments of heightened perception that can come upon you when you are out alone in a landscape, the strangeness of a distant wood on a hill, the history hidden beneath your feet, the ability of landscape to give you goose pimples, the secretive domains of birds and insects, or the fleeting connection between you and a fox as you interrupt each other on a country path.
The ongoing theme of my work is our relationship to nature, whether in a realistic or surrealist depiction of our internal and external worlds. Landscape for me is often a protective womb-like place in which we can find solace, escape or a safe environment away from the information overload and overcrowding we are experiencing in the modern world, just as Palmer escaped the incursions of industrial revolution into his patch of south London by escaping to Shoreham in the 1820s.
With a background as a painter in bright colours, my etchings in comparison are largely monotone. Recently I have begun hand-tinting artist proofs to make unique versions which alter the mood of a piece, reflecting time of day, geographical location or season. I feel the effect of transparent ink over the aquatint enhances the tone and richness of each print. These unique hand-coloured versions seem to have found the right balance for me between my painterly background and the very detailed graphic style of my printmaking.