Alice Jones: The Ground Beneath You Holds You
The Ground Beneath You Holds You
Through these works I investigate the aftermath of endings; they are born from lived loss and fear of loss. I question how and in what one finds grounding following periods of being untethered, and in the works I grapple with isolation and detachment from one’s surroundings and relationships. Through this grappling, there is also a quiet pushing against these forces as moments of beauty and solace emerge. Landscape, as a grounding force, provides the lens through which I ask these questions and the language through which I translate the discoveries. While landscape-based works often result from observations of one’s outer worlds, the landscapes here result from turning inwards, forgoing observation and documentation for feeling and processing: they are renderings of inner worlds.
Some works are purely mindscapes that draw little from a logical outer world and instead attempt to render a thought or set of emotions through a constructed landscape. Other works draw elements of their compositions from the outer world but use illogical palette, mark-making, or forms to steer the work away from reality. Others seek to investigate the regaining of that sense of groundedness through rendering of memories, connecting with home or times of stability that are otherwise distant or inaccessible.
In conjunction with isolation and loss, the work also deals with hope and uplift through the construction of moments of beauty. There are moments, such as in Geminids, where longing and isolation begin to give way to some sense of connection, comfort, grounding: two monoliths share in a view, their forms haloed by a reverberant yellow as a companionship emerges. In their isolation and union, the ground holds them; it holds with a stability and depth it has gained from ages of witnessing and absorbing. Spring Upheaving likewise reveals hope and beginning in the form of new growth that takes hold over a landscape that has undergone months of winter. The ground, again and always, providing. On the whole, the works deal with this loss of sense of self, loss of stability, and the rediscovery of the grounding forces that persist.
