Gallery

Dorset Paintings

23 March - 20 April 2024

‘One can travel this world and see nothing. To achieve understanding it is necessary not to see many things but to look hard at what you do see’. Morandi 

I am lucky to spend part of the year in the Bride Valley and it is here, in the lanes and down the tracks that crisscross the fields around my studio, that I take time to walk, look and listen to the landscape. At certain times of year, I repeat these daily routes again and again, which makes me acutely alert to the constant shifts of colour and pattern and I become very sensitive to the smallest changes of light - things in which I delight. This solitary time spent in the landscape feeds my practice and equips me when I return to the studio to paint.

Morandi’s words exemplify my belief that to keenly study what surrounds one is the way to find magic in the natural world. In this series of Dorset Paintings, I draw on a spiritual connection to the ancient Dorset landscape while using the light to evoke something universal.   I want the paintings to draw in the viewer and involve them in a place while at the same time, be seduced by the painted surface. 

I like to paint on a gessoed wood surface which allows me to ‘build’ the painting, I use emphatic mark making to pull and push the paint across the surface to describe, for example, a line of trees or a winding lane.  Very rarely does a human figure feature in these paintings but there is a definite human presence in this landscape, motifs that suggest a well farmed land of mown fields and hedgerows, grazing animals and muddy tractor tracks. 

Henrietta Hoyer Miller was born in London and spent her childhood in Northumberland. She graduated from City and Guilds of London Art School in 1986 and her first exhibition was held at Bonhams in 1991. Since 1995 HHM has held ten one-man shows in London with Long and Ryle Gallery and her work has been exhibited widely in group exhibitions and competitions across the country, most recently in the RA Summer Exhibition 2022 and 2023. Currently her work is included in ‘A Room With A View’ at Vardan Gallery, Los Angeles, USA