Georg Wilson

My work is inspired by English folklore; lore comes from the Old English word, lar, meaning learning or knowledge, and folk relates to a group of people in one place and their traditions. Whereas fairytales often come to us loaded with Victorian moralism, a lot of folklore relates to an understanding of how a local area came into being, or a magical explanation for a natural phenomenon, and there is always a kernel of truth in the story. For example, it is said in England that blackberries shouldn’t be eaten after Michaelmas Day (29 September), because the devil has spat on them. This plant folklore is useful, because around this time of year blackberries are vulnerable to a particular fungus.
These stories often demonstrate a closeness with the natural world that we have lost in a lot of contemporary Anglo-American society, a loss which I feel more keenly having grown up in London. In my paintings, I imagine my own folklore relating to an imaginary world, informed by the English countryside but outside of our realm, where strange creatures roam the land, entwined with nature.

For this exhibition I was looking to the Pre-Raphaelites amongst other references because of how they gave equal attention to plant details and to the figure.

Ode of Autumn encapsulates all the saturation and abundance of autumn, almost to the point of excess. It is a lethargic and ripe poem about nature dying down, melting into the soil. The Last Oozings sums up the themes of this exhibition: wetness, rot, and the cycle of the seasons.

My paintings follow the seasons, allowing the subject matter, mark-making, and colour palette to shift with the turn of the year. I began these paintings at the end of summer and was struck particularly by the arrival of autumn; the vivid reds, browns and yellows commanded my attention. Autumn is the most fleeting season, one of change and transformation, which is perhaps why I have never focussed on it before — it presents a challenge. I had to get a whole new set of oil colours to handle the brightness of colour that I saw outside this year. The wet textures of rotting leaves and rain-soaked soil, too, inspired new kinds of brushstroke in my paintings; I used beeswax and other mediums to add moisture and drips into the work.

Poetry is one of many sources that I look to. My work is also informed by non-fiction nature writers such as Robert Macfarlane and Annie Proulx, and the fictional work of Daisy Johnson and Olga Tokarczuk, amongst others, have been important touchstones for the way they entangle folklore with contemporary life.
Balance is very important to my paintings. There must be a positive access point to draw the viewer in, a character’s eye contact or the detail of a flower, but this could be contrasted with the swipe of a claw or a drop of blood.

My creatures are boulder-like, often hunched over the land or burrowed into it, part of nature. They originated out of merging fairytale tropes of a monstrous masculine beast-character with a vulnerable feminine maiden, but now they have totally come into their own. They have no morality, they are more animal than any human gender, and they exist outside of our own societal hierarchies.

I choose the wildlife in my work carefully. They are often common English species that are also wild, such as foxes or owls, not farmed or governed directly by human behaviour; the sort of creature you might only catch a brief sight of while out in the countryside. Similarly, I am painting worlds that do not allow you to see their entirety, they are glimpses into an unknown realm that feels wild, yet familiar.

The Old Master Lucas Cranach is a huge influence on my work; his jewel-like panel paintings hold every brushstroke with a sharp shininess. Cranach is the reason I began painting on wood panel, which in turn led to my own mark making becoming more defined. My swirling brushstrokes entangle scenes together — plant, animal and surroundings are all entwined together with one kind of mark, as part of the same ecosystem.

More than anything I want to encourage viewers to look at the natural world more closely and for longer, even if that means noticing a weed growing from an urban pavement, or the first buds of spring in the city.
My paintings aren’t overtly political, but I do think a lot about the fetishisation of the English countryside and how this is closely linked to a vision of green rolling hills absent of people. Humans and nature can co-exist and thrive; we have been changing the landscape for thousands of years alongside plants and animals, but this has tipped over into destruction. An unpopulated image of the countryside in England has sinister connotations of enclosure. The enclosure acts in Britain hundreds of years ago involved the eviction of people from land that had previously been common (collectively owned) by the landed gentry and aristocracy. The creatures I paint are an ongoing vessel for these thoughts, an attempt to resolve these ideas between wildness and the human.

I have been going to West Penwith in Cornwall all my life, and I’m returning there this spring for a residency at Anchor Studio (Porthmeor Studios). West Penwith is rich with local folklore and customs, and the quality of light and diversity in the landscape there are very important to my work.

I have been undertaking a series of research trips around England this year with a grant I was awarded from the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation, where I am doing more drawings outdoors, with special attention to the different detail and forms of specific plants. I hope this will push the level of detail in my paintings further.