Dorset Art Weeks provides the perfect opportunity to showcase the work of two local artists Kimberley Day and Kim Pragnell. Although quite different in style, palette and energy, they share a deep connection with the landscapes in which they live and the emotion they evoke. When describing their own work, both refer to vibrations, elemental impulse and sensory connection. When they’re not attempting to capture the landscape through paint, they are observing it, swimming, walking, or cycling in it or in Kim’s case, sailing upon it. The boundary between sea and land is liminal, tides link the space in between, rivers bridge mountains and forests.
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Instantly recognisable, each have their own distinctive style and touch. Kimberley’s abstracted landscapes are depicted in a harmonious palette that she has spent the past few years refining. Soft and contemporary in tone, the perspective and planes take the viewer on a journey into the canvas. Soft pink pathways and deep violet shadows lead us towards a creamy pale beach, beneath the shade of deep viridian forest and ochre bracken and fern. Warm coral and complimentary Matisse blue skip arm in arm across the canvas, arcs and flat marks made in acrylic paint, charcoal and coloured pencil on paper, applied in layers, each bringing their own vibration. Day is so successful in her colour combinations, it’s a delight to journey through her joyful landscapes. ‘The vibration and magic that is held in the light, the soundlessness when lost in the forest or crossing empty but well-trodden paths.’
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If Day’s landscapes exude femininity, then Pragnell’s landscapes embody a more masculine essence. The darks are darker, deep indigo takes us to the depths of a savage sea, and right back up to the white tips on the crest of a wave. We immediately respond to the obvious Romantic influences of Ruskin or Turner that he has so beautiful captured in the light streaming through stormy clouds or waves crashing onto giant rocks. So alive to the power of the elements, the energy literally jumps off the canvas, ‘I don’t for one moment lose sight of the first impulse of emotion. Reality is a part of it….feeling completes it.’ Following a career in the Royal Navy, he left to inhabit a rural existence close to the elements, finding inspiration in the seascapes of Dorset, Devon, Cornwall and Scotland. He follows in the footsteps of the romantic traditions of British maritime art, ensuring a growing following of collectors.