The Church Boats

Sigrid Holmwood strives to get to the heart of painting: not just as an activity, but as a material substance of entrenched history, inherited knowledge and innate meaning. She trawls centuries-old archives and internet forums and consults conservationists, chemists, and herbalists to revive the lost recipes of paint-making. Her pigments and glazes are concocted entirely from scratch, using all manner of ingredients from precious stones to powdered insects. Church Boats depicts an enactment of a midsummer festival in Rättvik, in the Swedish province of Dalarna, in which churchgoing villagers cross a lake in boats adorned with wreaths of birch. The yellow paint used in the scene is fittingly made from birch leaves, while the other hues are accomplished in similarly traditional oils and egg tempera. Holmwood’s luminescent style is strongly evocative of Impressionism. ‘I am interested in 19th century themes,’ she says of her nostalgic aesthetic. ‘That’s the period when they started to feel rural culture was being lost, and artists made a real political gesture against the city. Van Gogh went to Provence to live with peasants, and likened the act of painting to the peasants ploughing their fields. I like the idea that there is a history of artists doing that, artists trying to rough it. The psychedelic colours refer to the hippie movement, going back to the land, living in communes, which is a similar sentiment. I think these “hippie ideas” are having a resurgence today with people growing their own vegetables in allotments and the “slow food movement” ... I think of my work as being a “slow painting movement”.’