Deep human emotions laid bare through natural world

“More and more it feels like the world is . . . an increasingly sad, violent, hostile and intolerant place . . . and yet there’s still beauty and hope to be found . . . it’s all around us for now. . . perhaps we should all pause for breath, regain a bit of kindness and humanity and revel in the brilliance and majesty of the natural world.”

So says artist Alison Auldjo as the introduction to her show, Out of the Woods, in the gallery that she has owned and run for the past ten years. Although there are some uneven patches in this extensive range of imagery — most, ostensibly, about the natural world that surrounds us — there is sufficient quality of expression here to merit a serious consideration of this artist’s work.

It is tempting to compartmentalise these as “nature studies” — there’s a long and extremely valuable tradition here – but Auldjo’s imagery reaches beyond this, into the realm of biography and autobiography. This is explicit in the mixed-media work, Diminished Self Portrait, that shows a small creature, perhaps a squirrel, asleep amid ethereal flowers and thistles. There’s a great fragility here, born from suffering, depression and doubt — all universal emotions, of course, but here laid bare in a brave act of self-exposure.

Another work, which shows a hare juxtaposed with a seated child in a sombre landscape of browns and greens, looks back into the artist’s past and her close bond with her sister. The hare, which is a sacred, mystical creature in some cultures, is something of a leitmotif in Auldjo’s work, symbolising emotional bonds to the earth and family.

There’s no doubting the artist’s talent for representation, even mimesis, and when she wants to her depictions of deer, crabs, cows, sheep and flowers carry the weight of authenticity. Although she is clearly authoring paeans of praise and gratitude to the natural world, her stance also transcends such surfaces, probing the depths of her own psyche and encouraging viewers to do the same.

Her portrait of a mouse directs us to the creature’s fragility and beauty but in its gaze we see the predicament of the planet, reflected back to us, recalling Robert Burns: “I’m truly sorry man’s dominion / Has broken nature’s social union, /An’ justifies that ill opinion/ Which makes thee startle/At me, thy poor, earth-born companion, / An’ fellow mortal!”

It’s no easy matter for any artist to show their work, but for some, as here, it is more difficult to exhibit because of its personal nature. We as viewers must acknowledge our own privilege in accessing such intimate and heartfelt sentiments.

Until March 16