The Vanishing Point is solo exhibition by M J Wallis. The collection of works is a beautiful but weighted exploration of environment, biodiversity and process.

Molly Wallis is a painter & printmaker living in Suffolk, with a First Class BA Hons degree in Painting. She has always been absorbed by nature, landscape and memories.

"I spent early life growing up in rural Norfolk with lots of freedom to explore. Significant family haunts permeate my memory. Warm and fun in the dappled light of late summer, but in the winter bleak and lonely. From Norfolk I enjoyed travelling South America, where again the rugged Patagonian landscape greatly appealed to me. I lived on the edge of the beautiful peak district for 8 yrs where my children were born, and the prairies of Montana have a particular emotional connection for me. These places and memories naturally leach into my work without check, as fragments seen and dreamt. However, they are also strongly about the physical process of painting, the adding, the removing, the instinctive and the accidental. Within each piece there is an element of chance, a rediscovering of lost marks and gestures to produce familiar forms, which may not be apparent a second time.

Some of the paintings in this exhibition are from a series called Moth & Mould, strange abstract landscapes born from looking intensely at tiny areas of natural forms. The most recent painting, Entomology, was painted from a collection of dead insects randomly arranged and highlights the biodiversity crisis in the UK, as we are one of the most nature depleted countries on Earth.

During lockdown I began to make work using mezzotint because it was something I could lose myself in after home-schooling and teaching Art online. I soon became absorbed in the labour of love in the act of revealing the landscape or bird from the copper plate. It takes many, many hours to create these plates and then the actual printing is also extremely highly intensive. I print small, precious editions to reflect the dwindling populations of each bird on the red list and the vulnerability of their habitat. My print and paint practice might seem initially at odds with each other, but for me they are intrinsically of one."
 
Open to the public from 27th November 2024 – 1st February 2025.

Find out more about M J Wallis here:

Website: www.mjwallisfineart.com
Instagram: @mjwallisart