Biography
The inspiration for Hermione Carline's work lies in the transient beauty she perceives in the ordinary, in evoking the sensation of a particular moment where time seems to stand still. She aims to capture her own response to that instant, to get inside that feeling, always searching for that ephemeral quality which represents the space between reality and memory.
The method Carline uses is unique to her. Her camera acts as a visual notebook to record these chance moments which she then processes, sifts, pares down and crops, and from which she produces a series of drawings. From these she traces, magnifies and creates intricate paper stencils or monoprints, layering them together to re-photograph them against light to form newly constructed prints. These in turn inform her paintings.
Although the work may start from a strong figurative viewpoint, as it evolves it becomes increasingly abstract. Spaces mingle and blur as they take on new meanings and interpretations, as the structural is overlaid with tissue-like translucence. She creates a sense of detachment from the original source in order to recreate the power of its initial impact, focussing on capturing that moment of perfection she originally experienced.
Carline uses divisions within her paintings. Colours are reflected from the inner edges of the painting, playing on the tension created by the juxtaposition of the precise, physical divisions of the unyielding, hard wood surface with the soft, hand painted surface. In this way Carline explores the dichotomy between the static and the dynamic nature of memory.
