Our Relationship With Natural World To Be Explored At New Exhibition

An evocative look at the role nature plays in our everyday lives will form the basis of a striking new exhibition at Warrington Museum and Art Gallery.

Stefanie Trow's Walk With You will explore the relationship we have with our surroundings and her own emotional response to the landscape around her, including some local scenes such as Lymm, Walton and Daresbury.

It will run from Friday, 5 May, to Sunday, 9 July, and is free to view.

Influenced by travelling through the area on foot or bike, often with family, Stefanie's multi-layered paintings on show will vary in size from intimately small to imposingly large with the aim of encouraging people to think about their own connections with the outside world.

A love of landscape will be examined alongside other overlapping themes such as associations with family life and what lingers in memory.

Some paintings will have a warm palette to conjure up childhoods spent playing in the shade of benevolent trees and lazy summer afternoons. While others will spirit gallery visitors away to the diluted colours of the colder months, capturing sodden skies and muddy footpaths.

The characters in these scenes will change too as they interact with the changing seasons, swapping say brightly coloured anoraks for oversized sunhats.

Stefanie studied visual arts at Salford University and graduated in 2004.

As well as a fascination with the natural world, the artist is inspired by the texture and materiality of paint. Intense bold colours are pulled and scraped across the canvas, creating an expressive language of their own.

Stefanie's work is in numerous private collections and has been exhibited across the UK at galleries such as the Albemarle Gallery (London), and Saul Hay Gallery and Comme Ca Gallery (Manchester).

She has also featured in Baaba Maal's music video, Gilli Men, appeared on Sky Arts and is an associate member of Manchester Academy of Fine Arts.

Stefanie said: "This has been such a unique and inspiring project to collaborate on with Culture Warrington. The exhibition has been a fantastic journey through the landscape but also a personal journey as an artist to realise this exhibition.

"It is my hope that visitors feel connected emotionally to the work and the exhibition encourages us all to look and appreciate the often small overlooked areas in our life."