Marnie Pitts
I create symbolic paintings and drawings focusing on the conflict between city life and a yearning for nature.
I find myself constantly wrestling with this conflict. I live in London and I thrive on this collective, frantic energy, the beats of city chaos. I travel the pulsing arterial roads of the transport network and I think about the incredible efficiency of city life, for humans. My thoughts turn to the future and I know this can’t be sustainable. Cities mimic nature in many ways but they are controlled systems, adapted, suitable for our species at the expense of almost every other creature on this planet. The city is such a successful model of life that it is wiping out many others. I remember my childhood in Australia, the beaches, deserts and the native creatures and I feel a deep guilt and an urge to knock the city down, to create more space for nature to be. Will it always have be one or the other?
When I start a painting I have a narrative in my head. I work with rich, built up colours, thin glazes of oil paint. My latest series revolves around the interaction between human beings and the natural environment, and the negative effects related to our ability to manipulate the planet with our own creations, primarily cities.