Sussex based painter Lorna Holdcroft’s vast, epic landscapes celebrate the majesty of the British countryside. She paints the kinds of views that would stop one in one’s tracks, and describes them in such a way as to emphasise the colours of nature and the enormity of the bold, dramatic shapes of fields that dance over hills to the horizon. In stark contrast to the paintings of Danny Markey (who I interviewed last week), Lorna Holdcroft’s paintings are largely about scale and our relationship to landscapes that feel separate from us; something to feel in awe of, rather than a place that has been shaped and influenced by our existence within it. I was interested to learn more about Lorna Holdcroft’s painting practice. The landscapes you paint almost always evoke (to me) a feeling of viewing the scene as a distant memory, the textures and different marks that you make remind me of the distortions you might get with a old, faded or blurred photograph. How important is experiencing a landscape first hand before painting a picture of it? Does the connection you have to a particular landscape influence how you paint it? For me it is vital to paint a ...