Art and Heritage Online Database

Collection: Grays School of Art Collection
Object Type: painting
Artist/Maker: Kleineidam, Leila
Place Made: Gray's School of Art
Date: 2019
Media/Materials: oil on canvas
Awards: RGU Drawing and Painting Purchase Award
Classification: Drawing and Painting

Description:

My creative practice is informed by my research into anthropogeomorphology – the study of the effects of humans on the physical landscape. I am particularly interested in the intricate patterns found as a result of agriculture, forestry and sporting activities.
I work from photographs taken during my frequent hiking trips and satellite imagery of human modification of the Scottish landscape in the Highlands and Cairngorm mountain range. I admire the painstakingly coordinated effort it takes to minutely map, compart and work the land. Machines have drawn perfectly straight lines into the patchwork of intersecting fields, muirburn creates the most bizarre patterns in the scarred landscape and even the few remaining forests are shaved as accurately as military haircuts. These sources are used as a point of departure as I construct my own fictionalised landscapes in paint. I enjoy populating my imagined landscapes with clusters of organic ‘blobs’ and herds of animals.
My work seeks to question whether agriculture, grouse-shooting and other activities have tipped the balance towards an unequivocally anthropocentric use of land, perpetuating the process of slow violence on other species and driving them towards marginalisation or even extinction? Rather than guilttripping viewers, I aim to sensitize people to these complex questions; my open-ended works are about the pleasure of patterns and being cognisant of the world around me.

Object Number: ABDRG2019.21