2008 SOLO exhibition : In High Places;
The Alpine Club, Shoreditch, London until Friday 7 October 2008

Townsend's evocative landscapes are drawn from regular travels to some of the most inaccessible regions in the world. The current collection is based on visits to Tibet, the Himalayas, the Krygz Pamirs and the Tian Shan. The work is developed mainly from memory, but also from photos, drawings and paintings made during long, unplanned and usually solo journeys through remote high plateau and mountain regions.

Townsend's paintings are a study of her physical and emotional response to these vast, uninhabited vistas, which variously inspire, overwhelm and intimidate. "As I move through the landscape the initial sense of disorientation at the lack of human habitation gives way to a more meditative, slower, reflective state of mind and feeling. The scale of the landscapes is humbling. I begin to feel subsumed and conscious of my own insignificance. Despite appearing on the surface to be bleak and desolate, the landscapes gradually reveal an infinite variety of form, light, sound, colour and texture". Often Townsend will literally paint across the canvas from one side to the other to physically represent her journey, or use compositional devices to highlight her own routes and memories of the space. Returning to London to complete the work in an urban environment provides a space through which the memories and sensory experiences can be filtered and gives the work a more multi-layered, abstract perspective.

Since studying life drawing at The Slade, Townsend has explored the connections between the physicality of mountain environments and the characteristics and potential of human flesh and form. "The similarities have always struck me - the shared fragility, anxiety and vulnerability, not just the physical strength and beauty." This adds depth to the paintings as studies of the human condition, while as landscapes they offer a range of painterly language for recording our relationship with nature.

Polly Townsend was born in 1977 and completed an MA at The Slade in 2001. She has won several painting and drawing awards, including the Slade Life Drawing Prize (judged by Paula Rego), the Duveen Travel Scholarship and this year she was shortlisted for the 2008 Gilchrist-Fisher Landscape Painting Award. She has exhibited widely throughout the UK.

To view her paintings please browse the gallery rooms.