Millie Gleeson - Projection

2023-2025 FINLAND, SOMERSET AND NEW ZEALAND

I had been finding inspiration in the diversity of nature and natural cycles; becoming interested in my relationship with the environment and what it reflected back to me. This body of work became the next chapter of distorted self-portraits, blending of internal and external experiences.

I began this chapter over two artists residencies in Finland, which spanned Winter and Spring, my aim was to deepen a connection to natural rhythms. I spent my time walking over snow covered forests and frozen lakes, slowly watching the snow melt away and the green reemerge; the natural patterns were endlessly fascinating, each day offered something new to get absorbed in.

I began to play with automatic methods used by surrealist artists, like fumage, stillomancy and decalcomania, which reflected the patterns in nature. The inkblot became a favourite for its symmetry and links to the psychological Rorschach test; the micro and macro patterns reflected through internal and external landscapes became a fascination.

I continued this body of work back in Somerset and later developed it in New Zealand, exploring the wonderful forests and myself in them. As with my previous headings like ‘Shadow’ and ‘Perceptions’, I took a literal and metaphorical translation of ‘Projection’; playing with projecting shapes, light and images on to the body as well as projecting bodies onto various surfaces. This transformed the relationship between space and body; overlapping and layering there began to be a symbiosis of body, form, pattern and nature, which I am discovering through projection, image and paint.