Meet the Artist

Sensory experiences of wild landscapes sit at the heart of my practice. Process to me is key. The time I spend walking often feels like a collaborative act of time and memory with landscape. Capturing conscious and unconscious responses with my camera and drawing observations creates the foundation of my studio practice. Working with paper, frottage and eyes closed drawing I record sensory dialogues of touch, time and memory of place.  Autographic black marks and sculpted paper outcomes exist as unique documents of experience. Explorations which exploit the uniquely sensitive quality of drawing and serve as a catalyst for further work where notions of entangled pasts, present and futures are expressed through painting, print and sculptural forms.

The dialogues observed between time, memory and landscape as evolving and entwined histories are expressed through the manipulation of paint and surface, or the tactile, haptic manipulation of gathered finds from my walks.

Artworks become a reflection on my experiences and the philosophical interpretations of time, memory and landscape I find so interesting.

Zoë Ashbrook is a multidisciplinary landscape artist living and working in Gloucestershire, UK.  Zoë graduated with an MA in Fine Art (distinction) at the University of Gloucestershire in 2023. She is a director of Walking the Land, an artist collective linking landscape, community and art through projects, research, exhibitions, installations, writing and shared walks with artists, other professions and wider communities. 

Zoë's practice is process led and anchored in experiences of landscape and observations of time, nature and memory.  Mindful sketchbook mark making documents an immediacy of emotive and sensory responses experienced and recorded vignettes of interest captured on her mobile phone provide fragmented moments Zoë returns to later in the studio informing painting, sculpture, digital compositions and printmaking.

A visual language evolves through a process of repetition and layering, where addition and subtraction play an equally significant role in the evolution of the work. Zoë aspires to evoke within the viewer a reason to pause.  Inviting us to spend time with the work, allowing a slow reveal and a quiet recognition of the expressions of time and memory embedded within the work, our everyday experiences and the external landscapes we pass through.