Rhiannon Van Muysen Artists Statement
I grew up on the North coast of Scotland and after a few years spent in the lowlands have returned to live in the North West. The dramatic Highland landscape, shaped over millennia by repeated periods of glaciations and volcanic activity helps to inform and inspire much of my work. Recurring natural cycles and specific geological events are explored through a variety of media.
The development of the Earth over billions of years, from a barren mass of gas and rock to a rich biosphere of life is astounding and incomprehensible; a beautiful and eccentric world, orbiting in a solar system of apparently lifeless stars and planets. Paintings, prints and installations are born out of deep thought and research and are created intuitively using materials and processes connecting me to the subject matter. Photography has also become an important medium for me, through which I have been able to explore the geology of the land directly. I like to experiment with scale and altered perspectives; abstracted compositions of colour and mineral texture explore vast geological timescales and imagined landscapes. Water based paintings are created using inks, pigments and mineral substances which in some cases continue to develop and change over time through the formation of crystals and processes of oxidisation. In this way, the work reacts to the world around it, reflecting the continuously changing geology and biology of the land.