ANDREW HARDWICK
THE LAST OF THE SILENCE

Hardwick paints these landscapes that he sees but also the one that he remembers. Etched with those long gone sheep who were once herded on the saltings and ships once witnessed, now rotting or scrapped. These ghost like paintings often depict these edge-land zones where other works draw inspiration from the more typically idyllic locations such as coast line and moorland. However, even these landscapes are filled with subtle reminders of human interference. This is a notion ever present throughout Hardwick’s paintings, where either the stark presence of the modern makes itself unambiguously known or where something deeply mournful lurks beneath a seemingly quiet, lyrical pastoralism. In all cases, the artists life, and mortality become fused with the fragility of his surroundings, both of which are becoming increasingly impeded upon. However there remains a sentimental ‘tug of war’ where in palpable contrast, past human intervention becomes submerged by the terrain which surrounds them. The intrusive impact of what was once claimed by ‘the modern world’, now disintegrates and becomes entombed. For example sites which had earlier been the location of army camps and gun placements during the war now physically fade along with their memory. So perhaps all is fleeting, as the passing of time and the earth itself seem to engulf all that temporarily sit upon it - adding to its delicate layers of geology. So what is perhaps most at risk of loss along the way is not only ourselves but our relationship to our earth for the time that we have here.

In 1900, Ferdinand Hodler described landscape painting as “the expression of pantheistic communion with nature, an attempt to express the whole of nature as experienced through the simplest pictorial means.” Hardwick also presents man through his separation from nature, acknowledging this more modern and supposedly enlightened position or condition. One of the criticism faced by landscape painting is that through it we are experiencing the artists version of nature as opposed to nature herself, where artist’s ego competes with the unbridled beauty of the natural world; this objective sets up a competition with the muse, wrangling with it for supreme evocation of the majestic. However Hardwick’s paintings subvert these notions by laying them bare, the experiences of mankind’s mark made tussles with nature for omnipotence. Man’s ego is knowingly presented versus the power of nature to reclaim, albeit with time.

Hardwick’s medium of working is also atypical, pushing what a painting can be. Works are heavily layered using peoples left overs - things found, traces from and surplus to the modern need, with different types of paint (often sourced from recycling centres or skips), plaster, plastics, ash, soils, pigments, felt, geotextile membrane, hay and other unconventional materials. To the resultant rich, delicate and seductive surface relevant artefacts are often added, creating reminders, triggering memories or reflecting fears intrinsic to a particular landscape. What results reflects the confusion, complexity and renewal which mirrors both the landscape and our own existence. The exquisite subtlety of colour and tone built within the surface is often contrasted by visceral rawness, appearing almost as if attacked, with indiscriminate fervour, evoking the unsentimentality of nature and reinforceing the ecological abandon of mankind too.

Hardwick’s entire oeuvre makes reference to concepts of change, memory, history, emotion and transience. That which appears delicate perhaps acknowledges much considered ecological fragility, but a weight and mass, places emphasis with the monumental, elemental power that the earth has over us, despite the allusion of our present power over it. We are just another layer in time and the archeology of the earth. If these paintings are to be seen as mournful then that which we mourn is perhaps our own loss of intimacy with our natural surroundings and our own temporary stain made. However, we also bare witness to natures raw and elemental beauty, through gestural power and her subtle hue. Through confrontation to our ego, she reminds us that some things are much bigger than we are and that some things are more enduring. The consequence of our contemporary concerns may become inconsequential in the long tun. I find that there is some hope in that.


Joseph Clarke, 2022