Through her jewelry, Beth Legg explores the sense of place through landscape and memory. Legg is originally from the far north coast of Scotland, and this remote environment has strongly influenced her work. She is fascinated by the hinterlands and quiet edges of places, with their characteristic bleak remoteness that is both beautiful and melancholy. She works with materials instinctively rather than contriving designs beforehand; she enjoys the labor of traditional hand-tool methods, which allow her to be in dialogue with her materials as she explores their innate qualities and inherent possibilities. For Legg, the body is a landscape—her pieces are transformed when worn, and wearers appropriate the narrative of the landscape and make their own associations. Away from the wearer, her jewelry takes on the character of still lives, thanks to their contemplative and sensitive interpretation of the sense of place.
