Countless artists have sought to record faithfully what they see in their environment entitling it the “natural” world. But how much of it is truly natural? Certainly the elements are natural but as for the whole? Virtually nothing. Mankind has taken those natural elements and deconstructed them, rearranging them to suit a need to extract, to grow, to partition, to present in an artistic manner. Trees are grown in lines, the land divided into fields, mining, quarrying, extraction of resources, draining, flooding, clearing and cultivating all combine over hundreds and thousands of years to form the landscape we now see.

This has inspired Victoria to run with the idea of taking familiar things apart, changing their context and putting them together in a different way. Rather than a picture of a polished concrete floor, her eye sees wet sand; a tumble of bedclothes, china and glass shows the sea.

Heavily influenced by her degree in Environmental Science and following a highly successful summer exhibition Victoria has created a number of harbour scenes inspired by the Somerset and Devon villages of her childhood.

Victoria Smith