Artist Statement

Charlotte Knaggs, visual artist and painter

My work concerns an interruption of the everyday view of the known world, exploring the intricate diagrams and patterns that lie just beneath the surface. Depictions of craggy rockfaces and vast weathered moorlands, spaces that are integral to my personal history, evoke a sense of timelessness and ancient knowledge that transcends temporal reality. History and land, particularly Neolithic land art, influences patterns and art that express an appreciation for the world. In a pursuit of semi-abstraction and an interest in dreams and surrealism, I take these locations and twist them with the dreamlike unreliability of recall, linking them to the diagrammatic visuals that make up a convergence of the microscopic and the massive. From the structure of tiny brain neurons, to trees and even universes, there are patterns that make up all things. These motifs inspire cartographic linear investigations in my work, as I use thin layers of paint to create a dreamlike haze juxtaposed with the prismatic and striking patterns of the unseen. Altering and distorting these landscapes pushes my limits of visual expression of complex themes and concepts.