Meg Foster - About the Artist

aboutmeg

Meg was born and brought up in North Norfolk, spending much of her childhood on the cliffs and beaches at Cromer. Painting and drawing has been part of Meg's life from a very early age, winning her first painting award; The Cotman Award, at the age of 12.

Still living in North Norfolk, Meg's love of the coast and countryside is the inspiration behind her work. Whether it is a seaworn piece of glass rolling on the shingle or the dramatic line of the cliffs towering above a small child; the memories and impressions live on in her paintings.

Meg says of her love of North Norfolk: ''The watery skies fill my imagination with paintings longing to be painted.''

Meg gathers her materials in sketches, prose and photographs, allowing these images to distill over time and reduce down to the barest impressions which form the beginning of her journery on the canvas. The faint smell of seaweed, fleeting glimpse of a bird in flight being swept along by the strong east winds all work together to form the composition which advances and retreates as she paints. ''My memory is a gathering of impressions which roll and tumble like broken shells, worn glass, flints, bricks and tiles long fallen into the sea.''

The media Meg uses is a mixture of expression - pastel, acrylic, oils, gouache and especially beeswax and damar resin which are melted, moulded and fused together using the Encaustic technique. Encaustic is an early form of painting which dates back to ancient Greece; it is the mixture of beeswax, damar resin and pigment which are then fused together using a heat source. Meg has been fascinated by this ancient medium for many years. She began by experimenting in her own studio and then moved on to study this beautiful medium at the esteemed manufacturer and research center in this field 'R&F Paints' in New York. '' In Encaustic technique I have found the ideal medium which allows layers to be built up and left to slumber or woken up and pulled through the painting into the present; just as layers of sand and shingle on a beach are hidden until the eroding work of the sea reveals their form.''

Meg Foster – Taking the Coast Road

By Dr Bunty Gotts

‘’Painting is my way of life – without it there is no dream, no poetry or moment’

Meg Foster is a local artist who has painted and drawn from an early age. Winning the Cotman award at the age of 12, she has gone on to develop her own unique approach to landscape. Her large richly hued canvasses, imprinted with fluid and simple shapes, somehow capture the essence of place, allowing the viewer to enter in, and wander at will.

Art finds its components in its surroundings, drawing inspiration from the ‘miracles’ of everyday life, and it is clear that the love of colour and space, so apparent in Meg’s work, comes from the singular and evocative landscape of North Norfolk where she grew up. As a child, she spent hours playing and walking on the cliffs, often simply looking out to the vast skies, with their ever changing and shifting depth of colour, stretching like an unbroken canvas to the far horizon.

‘’The watery skies fill my imagination with paintings longing to be painted’’

No wonder then, that her vibrant work is imbued with a sense of space, light and movement. Then there was the sea, sometimes calm and tranquil, reflecting the light of the sky and at other times turbulent and noisy. The white crested waves rearing up like wild horses before they crashed onto the beach. This constant movement provided a sharp contrast to the stability of the land; the cliffs acting as a barrier between the two. In many of Meg’s canvasses, ribbons of texture, varying in depth, size, colour and shape traverse the emptiness. Sometimes they form a barrier between colours or forms, but they are neither intrusive nor alien. They do not simply occupy the space, but inhabit it.

Often sharing Meg’s cliff-top world were the birds. She avidly followed their flight paths, as they cut through the emptiness, making graceful shapes against the clear backgrounds as they glided in the thermals, were swept along by the strong east wind or hung almost motionless, suspended in the sky. Those who know Meg’s work will be well aware that the motif of a bird is a constant in many of her pictures. All of these images; the skies, the birds, the sea and the cliffs form the cornerstones of her compositions. Building on her memories, Meg gathers her materials in sketches, prose and photographs. Allowing these images to distil over time, she reduces them down to the barest impressions. It is these impressions, which advance and retreat as she works, that mark the start of the journey from inspiration to finished work.

Her deceptively simple canvasses are also the result of many year’s experimentation with various and varied pigments and different mediums and techniques. The media Meg uses are pastel, acrylic, oils, gouache and especially beeswax and dammar resins, which are melted and moulded and then fused together using a heat source. This is known as Encaustic technique and is a very ancient form of painting dating back to the ancient Greeks. Meg has been fascinated by this medium for many years, starting out by making the paint in her kitchen and eventually going to New York to study it in depth. However, as I have pointed out, art is never simply about stylistic form. Meg’s search for new and different methods is her reaction to her particular world. It is the choices make regarding both the forms and methods used that are charged with meaning, and any meaning attached is governed by the values given them by the artist.

‘’With encaustic technique I have found the ideal medium, in that it allows layers to be built up and then left to slumber, or be woken up and pulled through the painting to the present; just as layers of sand and shingle on a beach are hidden until the eroding work of the sea reveals their form.’’

For those of you new to Meg’s paintings, I hope this will have given an insight into the motivations behind this exhibition, and for those of you who already know and appreciate her work: I hope you will look at it with a fresh eye. What I have tried to show is that Abstraction is not meant to strip away meaning, but to expand it, widening and underscoring the artist’s relationship not only with the observable subject, but also the influences behind it.

‘’My memory is a gathering of impressions which roll and tumble like broken shells, worn glass, flints and tiles long fallen into the sea.’’

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