Jane Ward’s transient landscapes immediately transport us into a fantastical world. Like an imagined scene from an intricately characterized story, Ward’s creations are meticulously constructed from various images, namely a combination of photographs she’s taken and hand-painted elements, which have been broken down again and again and then pieced back together to make stunning visionary scenes.
The painterly marks are executed by hand. Sometimes Ward will paint these onto a piece of paper, then scan and digitally combine them into the image, manipulating their shape and form in the process to get the desired effect. On other occasions she will actually paint the marks onto the surface of the paper or add them as screenprinted layers once the digital image has been printed, so the paint or ink sits on the surface of the paper.
In both cases, traces of earlier forms are present, while new elements are injected amongst them, creating a sense of memory and passing of time. Repetition is very apparent, and often Ward will use the same fragment of a photograph a number of times within the same image, flipped upside down or on its side, which again, adds to the aspect of recollection within the work. The cityscapes, villages and rural and industrial settings she creates are both familiar and disturbing as they allude to the cycles of destruction and regeneration witnessed in our everyday surroundings.