Christian Ward’s paintings draw on a range of cultural and actual sources.

Ward’s technique is derived from the classic step-by-step DIY painting manuals made for the amateur painter. These manuals illustrate methods originated by the Old Masters that are now often seen in kitsch living room landscapes. Other influences range from the American visionaries who first painted the wilderness of the West in the 19th century to popular Japanese woodcuts, and Temple gardens.

Ward’s strongest influence is the island of Yakushima, a World Heritage Site off the southern most part of Japan in the Pacific where his mother is from. He first visited as a small child and returned two years ago. The island is one of the Ryuku Islands and contains the tallest peak, Miyanora Dake. Ascending from sea level towards the peak you pass through sub-tropical rainforests, lightly wooded mountains, through swamps and barren mountains littered with rhododendrons and boulders. Yakushima contains some of the last virgin forests in Japan, one of the most technologically charged countries of the world. The ancient forests are teeming with life, covered in moss, streams and roots.

Using a saturated, technicolor palette with deliberate, slow-paced brush marks Ward paints individual landscape elements that he combines into small and large-scale works. Recent pieces based on Yakushima, such as Island, 2002 and Centrepoint, 2002 are full of rock clusters, woodlands, waterfalls, oases and deserts, neon clouds and heavy sunsets. New works for Inside the Island have moved into a subterranean maze of caves and grottoes mapped by luminous brushstrokes slipping and sliding between psychedelia and Disney, sci-fi and the pre-historic.