The creative world of Trisha Birch

For as far back as I can remember, I have always drawn. I sometimes joke that I was born with a Bic biro in one hand and a paint brush in the other. I was very much an introverted child so drawing for me was a way of escapism, my own little world where magic could happen.

Safe to say that I broke out of my quiet little shell when I left school and embarked on studying Art and Design full time. I left my small town at 16 and went to the bright lights of Hull where I studied on the BTEC National Diploma in Art and Design, specialising in Fashion and Textiles. Not being convinced that this was the right route for me I went onto study on an Art Foundation course in Leicester in 2000. It was an intense year of art and drawing practises and I came out feeling fulfilled as my signature style had come to fruition.

Alot of my influence came from studying artists such as Paul Cezanne (the Grandfather of Cubism), and looking into the breakdown of geometric forms in Nature and landscapes. I had a love of architecture and much of my work before moving to Knoydart (2020) was seeing the beauty in the city landscapes of Leeds (where I resided and studied Art and worked in Community Art from 2002-2018). Much of the drawings I created of Scaffolding, Cranes, Chimneys and windows have a reflection of similarity to the shapes and forms of Tree branches that I observe here on Knoydart.

Yorkshire also has some spectacular countryside views, I feel really drawn to Craggs and rock formations, seeing faces in them like they are some kind of old wizened wise Sage or Crone, somehow holding the secrets of the time gone by, before even humanity stepped on the land. I am in awe of the ancient volcanic rocks formations on Knoydart, and find it so special to have natural glitter on my boots from the abundance of Mica that sits pleasantly in the ground, around the peninsula.

My use of Bright colours with contrasting black is likely to be influenced from studying Design, I was inspired by old Soviet Russian posters with their block colours and striking black contrast. I tend to observe colours in daily life as being bright, bold and iridescent, and much of the colours I choose in my pieces can be from any given point in time, colours I see on the rocks and wood after a heavy rainfall, the ultra violet light seen at dawn or at dusk, and the array of warm colours given from each and every beautiful sunset. The colours represent a time when I just thought `Wow`.