In Conversation with
ANDREW SUTHERLAND Drifter - Salon91 03 April – 04 May 2019 www.salon91.co.za
Andrew Sutherland is inspired by wanderlust and the narratives that underlie human encounters with the natural world. His work relishes the delights of landscape in painted planes that combine graphic and illustrative elements with more traditionally painterly, expressive marks. His taste for adventure follows through with a long and explorative history of experimentation with different materials: watercolours, brush pens, acrylic paints, charcoal, ink, spray paint or collage on canvas, paper, wood, wall, and most recently oil paints and monotype prints. We catch up with The Artist as he prepares for his fifth solo exhibition at Salon Ninety One. ‘Drifter’ will open on the 3rd of April and run until the 4th of May. Natasha Norman: Has the inspiration for Drifter come from a specific experience of place, or the more general encounter with being in natural environments? Andrew Sutherland: Drifter is about a character who doesn’t settle. He wonders and that wondering is partly within painted spaces of pure imagination. I mean, pristine, untouched natural spaces – if they do exist – are few and far between. In my paintings that idea of pure landscape is able to exist. So this character is moving without anchor through these ideas of spaces. Sometimes he comes across the residue of habitation: a shelter or a dwelling, but for the most part I have struggled to let go of the desire to imagine the uninhabited.
Lake Crossing, 2019, Mixed media on canvas, 600 x 800mm
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