Marna Lunt works primarily in oil, drawn to its sensuous materiality and the depth of
engagement it demands. Incorporating paint, pigment sticks, pastels and wax, her practice is rooted in an exploratory approach to surface, where the physical properties of each medium are tested through layering, scratching and reworking. Oil paint is valued for its responsiveness, from its creamy viscosity to the resistance it offers as it begins to dry, allowing Lunt to build complex, tactile surfaces. Through glazing and the introduction of additional mediums, she creates dense, earthy colour fields and intricate textures that often evoke macro perspectives of plant life moorland vistas.

For Lunt, the act of painting is inseparable from its outcome. The process is immersive and emotive, unfolding through a continual cycle of layering, mark-making, and revision. Each painting begins with an underlying structure informed by memories of the moorland landscapes of the North East coast, where she spent her childhood. These remembered terrains provide an internal framework—an anatomy of place, upon which the work is built.

Through successive applications of colour, drawing and glaze, forms emerge, dissolve and reconfigure, mirroring the way perception and memory are processed over time. Lunt’s compositions often focus on compressed or zoomed-in fragments of landscape, deliberately flattening depth and perspective. By isolating these partial views, she resists panoramic representation in favour of a more intimate and immediate encounter. This approach reflects an attempt to navigate the overwhelming complexity of the external world by attending closely to its details such as colour, atmosphere, and sensation. Buildings and figures are largely absent, allowing the work to centre on the experiential qualities of landscape rather than its narrative content.

Colour plays a central role in Lunt’s practice, functioning as both a descriptive and emotional force. Her paintings translate external environments into internal responses, using saturated tones and layered textures to convey states of calm, intensity and introspection. While her
work often evokes solitude, this is not presented as absence but as a space of reflection and connection.

Through an ongoing investigation of material, texture and form, Lunt’s paintings operate as
both landscapes and psychological spaces, sites where memory, perception and emotion converge.