Artist Statement
Christina Symes is an award-winning UK based artist with paintings in international collections. Her practice strives to stimulate the viewers’ awareness of their own environment, specifically their engagement with nature.
Through her painting, she shares her own experience of liberation through nature. This offers her a form of escapism, peace and solitude, in contrast to complexities modern life can bring. She combines realistic, enhanced and imaginary elements, using bold, amplified colours and divergent tonal values. By incorporating silhouettes of anonymous and isolated figures facing away from the viewer, a sense of mystery and curiosity can be generated. The figures are stripped of identity and personality to direct the viewer’s focus firmly on the figure’s relationship with its surroundings. She aims to reflect a narrative of the mental dialogue between human and nature, and hopes this dialogue enhances the importance of our natural environment, our personal engagement with it and the benefits it can bring to our wellbeing.