Currently focussing on the wide horizons of the South Downs, Shirley’s prints have emerged from her academic research where she works with physiotherapists to investigate the significance of walking in the landscape. The notion of the landscape as a site of care underpins her prints which capture the everchanging nature of the environments she walks in daily.
These images evolve slowly as layers accumulate, capturing the experience of shifting skies and the changing nature of light on the land and sea when walking. Monoprint techniques combine with multiple photographic and stencilled layers, creating variable editions where the accumulation of layered mark making accentuates the physicality of each work.
These works are inspired by John Constable’s sky studies and J.M.W. Turner’s sea and landscapes, with Shirley’s process aiming to capture the fleeting nature of walking in the landscape. Within these works process, materials and memory intertwine reflecting Katve-Kaisa Konturri’s observation that ‘Whenever we see an image, there are always multiple material-relational processes involved, intertwined with it, co-working it’. [1]
[1] Konturri, K. (2018) Ways of Following: Art, Materiality, Collaboration. London: Open Humanities Press.
Downs I (2024) Screenprint: Image: 14 x 30/Physical media: 30 x 42. Variable edition of 7
Downs II (2025) Screenprint: Image: 16 x 40/Physical media: 37 x 55. Variable edition of 7
Downs III (2025) Screenprint: Image: 11 x 30/Physical media: 29 x 42. Variable edition of 8
