Sarah Bold
Chasm, 2026
Oil, peat (Harlosh/Scotland), red dirt (Nharangga Country/Australia) on canvas
130 x 150 x 3 cm
Own Art
As low as 10 interest-free monthly payments of £250 and £300.00 deposit.
Changing Ideas Award 'CHASM' Living on a Scottish island, the intensity of rainfall has increased as the climate changes. I’ve been thinking about the global relationship and attitude to water...
Changing Ideas Award
"CHASM" Living on a Scottish island, the intensity of rainfall has increased as the climate changes. I’ve been thinking about the global relationship and attitude to water as a resource, the circular flow between sky, earth and sea, as it travels between hemispheres. Water is everywhere, in many different guises, affecting land and people in so many ways - yet always connected.
Growing up in rural Australia water as a resource was always forefront. When scarce, concerns were of drought, bushfires and livestock, how long until the rain water tanks and the bore water ran dry.
On a trip to Australia I flew over the desert in flood. The colour and landscape was amazing, transformed. From the tiny window of the plane the desert looked like a sea floor. What appeared as ripples and rivulets from above were rivers, wetlands and inland seas. The shift in scale seemed impossible to grasp as the vastness stretched on and water poured over the land.
Similarly, flying above the rugged snow capped Scottish Highlands, they seem to gently undulate, nestling in to valleys and glens, belying the immense geological forces that formed them, constantly sculpted by water, creeping and shifting. A trickle becomes a chasm, glacier, an ocean. Taking place over eons of time or created in a moment of catastrophe.
Water, violent in both its fury and its absence.
Within this painting the use of dirt from both hemispheres is my way to acknowledge water, its relationship to the land and my place amongst it. Water sustains life and provides an invaluable resource not just to humanity but all ecosystems. Peat from our croft resonates as historically it was drained of water and used as a heat source. Now protected and restored it is recognised as an incredible storage for carbon.
The red dirt is synonymous with Australia representing a vulnerable topsoil blown away by drought, washed away by flood, irrigated and overgrazed, stolen.
I wanted the painting to show the movement of water over the landscape, to see the power and beauty of its force by what it leaves behind. - the artist
"CHASM" Living on a Scottish island, the intensity of rainfall has increased as the climate changes. I’ve been thinking about the global relationship and attitude to water as a resource, the circular flow between sky, earth and sea, as it travels between hemispheres. Water is everywhere, in many different guises, affecting land and people in so many ways - yet always connected.
Growing up in rural Australia water as a resource was always forefront. When scarce, concerns were of drought, bushfires and livestock, how long until the rain water tanks and the bore water ran dry.
On a trip to Australia I flew over the desert in flood. The colour and landscape was amazing, transformed. From the tiny window of the plane the desert looked like a sea floor. What appeared as ripples and rivulets from above were rivers, wetlands and inland seas. The shift in scale seemed impossible to grasp as the vastness stretched on and water poured over the land.
Similarly, flying above the rugged snow capped Scottish Highlands, they seem to gently undulate, nestling in to valleys and glens, belying the immense geological forces that formed them, constantly sculpted by water, creeping and shifting. A trickle becomes a chasm, glacier, an ocean. Taking place over eons of time or created in a moment of catastrophe.
Water, violent in both its fury and its absence.
Within this painting the use of dirt from both hemispheres is my way to acknowledge water, its relationship to the land and my place amongst it. Water sustains life and provides an invaluable resource not just to humanity but all ecosystems. Peat from our croft resonates as historically it was drained of water and used as a heat source. Now protected and restored it is recognised as an incredible storage for carbon.
The red dirt is synonymous with Australia representing a vulnerable topsoil blown away by drought, washed away by flood, irrigated and overgrazed, stolen.
I wanted the painting to show the movement of water over the landscape, to see the power and beauty of its force by what it leaves behind. - the artist