Liz Poraj-Wilczynska is an artist and
illustrator working in the Cotswolds region of western England. She trained
as an archaeological illustrator, specialising in the painstaking precision
of finds-illustrations and reconstruction-drawings for professional
archaeology publications. Her mobile exhibition for the Crickley Hill
Archaeological Trust received commendation for the Hepworth Heritage Award
1988.
Over recent years she has broadened the scope of her work, overlaying
archaeology with photography, painting, sculpture, personal experience and
social perspective. She investigates sense of place and presence, using
insights to interact with the ghost landscape of the past and influence the
creation of works in the present. Reconnecting with “the everyday, the
forgotten and the discarded” allows each place to tell its own story, with
touch, feel and smell as well as auditory and visual stimulus.
At present she is working on a year-long multi-media project at Belas Knap
long-barrow in Gloucestershire, documenting the barrow and the land around
it through the changing seasons. By spending time in the landscape, visiting
at night as well as by day, the artist follows the conversation between land
and barrow, translating the story of the everyday past into the present. The
moment of first perception is the most important, she says: at what point in
the landscape do we feel within the presence of place?
