Today (Wednesday) marks the virtual opening of four new Castle Park Arts Centre exhibitions, including Disappearing World, a series of 26 paintings by Gillian Robertson.

Gillian's pieces portray an environment transformed by climate change, where local landscapes are distorted by roiling clouds and creeping floodwater.

Through her use of colour and shape, she imbues the solidity of our surroundings with strangeness, throwing the familiar into flux.

As the low-hanging sky stains the land an acidic pink, and displaced animals pick through deserted buildings, the comfortable contours of daily life become uncanny, ominous.

"I've always felt close to the natural world," Gillian says. "Brought up on a dairy farm, I spent my childhood in the fields, and remember drawing them."

Traces of Gillian's rural upbringing can be seen in 'Oak', in which the rich red-brown bark of an old tree is beset by hook-beaked birds.

"As the years pass it's impossible to ignore the changing pattern of the seasons, the erosion of coast lines and the disappearance of the wild hedgerows of the past. It's impossible to not feel great sadness about the effects of human progress on the species that share our environment."

Evoking the shifting moods of our natural world

"My pictures usually begin with outdoor sketches in ink and watercolour, often at speed, trying to catch the moment of the light on the landscape, the feeling of the weather, the grazing patterns of animals," Gillian says.

"There are several in the exhibition inspired by local sites, including 'Storms from the West', 'Plain', 'Hillfort', 'Flood', 'Washed Away', 'Estuary from Flint' and 'As Light Fades'."

This last painting is a powerful depiction of a view from Cheshire over the Mersey towards Liverpool. In it, Gillian captures the ailing light of late sunset, creating the feeling that night – both physical and metaphorical – is falling across the land.

"Colour can be as ominous as darkness," Gillian explains, "and the contrast between the warmth and tone of different paintings is a way of expressing the vast power of light, whether in menacing blues, fading greens, chaotic pinks or in blinding gold."

Colour and tone also play a significant role in 'Hillfort', in which wolves stalk through the trees of Woodhouse Hillfort.

In this painting, which Gillian created from a sketch of her dogs, we see a future returned to the wildness of the ancient past, where nature emerges from the grip of human development.

Finding inspiration in traces of the past

"Occasionally, when I'm unable to get outside in winter I work from another source," Gillian continues.

"Some of my pieces refer to archaeological excavations I have taken part in, while others allude to monuments and sculpture from the past that have long between eroded by nature, or the remains of buildings still standing from classical times.

"For example, paintings such as 'Shelter', 'Passage' and 'Fire' are inspired by classical interiors in Herculaneum and Crete."

In these pieces, the opulent indoor spaces of a long dead human civilisation are given over to nature, explored by mildly bewildered goats and geese.

Through these images, Gillian hopes to convey the futility - and the sinister consequences - of believing that we might control nature.

"I have no certainty about the future but I have great hope that the birds and animals and lesser species of the world find a way to survive what we have inflicted on them," she says.

This sense is probably summed up best in 'Skyward', which shows horses leaping weightlessly into the sky above a watery cityscape.

You may be wondering: how did Gillian come up with this mystical image?

"Sometimes, my sketches take on a life of their own," she says.

"This might happen when experiments with colour bring a new sense to the painting, or when a more recent experience insists on being placed in the work or on raising a question within it.

"Making a painting can be quite open ended: it's often better to let it take shape of its own accord and develop its own mystery or paradox, rather than try to control it too much.

"I try to combine expressive layers of paint with enough graphic detail to give the work focal points."

These fleeting moments of clarity tease our very human desire to uncover the exact meaning of an image.

But as hazy shapes slip and spiral across the concrete features of each painting, Gillian reminds us that true understanding is often out of our reach.

You can follow the [I]Disappearing World exhibition on Castle Park Arts Centre's Facebook and Instagram pages. As well as frequent posts exploring Gillian's paintings, the Arts Centre will publish a full showing on March 2 at 8pm, followed by some gallery shots on March 13 at 8am.

You can also see more by clicking through the gallery at the top of this article.

If you would like to find out more about any of the works on display, please email your request to both [email protected] and [email protected], or phone 01928 735832 to leave a message. Gillian's beautiful paintings are also available in prints and cards.

The pieces on display in Disappearing World can also be found on Gillian's website.

To find out more about the exhibition from the artist herself, please email [email protected] or call 07518 102519. [.I]