I am a painter by trade. I came to EDAM looking for new inspiration for my painting and the classes didn’t let me down. I have many new ideas for paintings.

My drawings come from a natural lean toward automatic drawing. In the earlier drawings I am just letting the felt tip pen roam from one point to another resulting in images that are full of movement. I have taken this further and produced a sculpture from 2d drawings to 3d, shape shifting again. My later drawings are taken from small images within the automatic drawings and given a life all of their own as stand alone images.

My drawing Totem is probably the best example of the illusion of movement within these drawings, with a fleshy shimmering feel. The best example I feel of the later images is the pony and rider, both images being taken from my automatic drawings.

 

Decades of such activity latterly embraced the issue of climate change and an obsession with democratising music making and contemporary music. Over the years this has included residences within which I ran practical art sessions focused on art and music. 

The COVID pandemic has given me pause for thought and I have decided to ease myself out of the most intensive aspects of my involvement in music organisation and focus on personal artistic activity, possibly as a means of thinking about how best to engage in the pressing issues that face us today. 

The EDAM project has been a supportive companion during this ongoing process of change.

Where does memory reside? Is it in the mind, the body or a system? How can drawing become remembering?

 

In both drawing and painting, I try to remove unnecessary detail – paring back in order to clarify and connect with the power of either colour or line. Preferring the immediacy and freshness of mark-making, I play with mechanics, the implication of performance and the element of chance.

 

 

I’ve been experimenting with trusting my subconscious to come up with images, via blind drawing, on a larger scale. By relaxing and giving space and attention to the changing landscapes inside and outside, I work with the lines and images that come up and out through my hand as I tentatively nudge my work forward, letting the abstracted interpretations of my thoughts and observations have their say. 

 

Wild dandelions caught my attention on walks (and through the cracks in my paving) and I noticed their shapeshifting forms. As they were not in short supply, I harvested a bagfull of their flower heads on a walk through the Kentish countryside one day. Then I roasted, boiled, pulped and mixed them with glue, before pasting this crude ochre-like pigment onto paper that I cut up into shapes for the collage. 

 

I tried to interpret the seedheads they form using ink and water dripped onto graphite powder rolled over watercolour washes, or with frottages from the woodchip wallpaper in my hallway. This created dots that I cut into basic circles. I also frottaged dandelions with a carbon stick to create the pillar - or portal - behind the large painted seedhead.

 

I started drawing Eliana. Her hair is fox red and my drawing was intended as a celebration of the body, carving the curves with ink and pastel, painting gesso in and drawing the shape back out again; the body changing and evolving.

The foxy wallpaper was created as a backdrop to the portraits of my nan, my mum and I at 49 to reference Kitsune. The portraits are first attempts; quick, rough and imperfect on an unfamiliar ground of Duralar. Unfinished works at 49.

The process of supporting my loved one has forced me to re-evaluate my attitude to my own body and I hoped to be brave enough to model for my own life drawing but I am not there yet. The process of acceptance is a long one and I am a work in progress, as are the works I have submitted. 

 

My work rarely features purpose-bought materials. I’m a magpie, perpetually in collection mode. My studio is crammed with books, magazines, journals, comics and an extensive fabric library. Like a schoolboy, I cram my pockets with found treasures, which I squirrel away for years. 

 

There’s a real reverie, a flow, revisiting these materials, sifting through my collection, collating old images into new shapes and giving them a new form. 

Outcomes can never be planned. The pairings are, by definition, serendipitous. Oddly, I can recall the forms, colour and textures of my collection, often for years but I’m partially face blind so struggle to recognise facial features. That maybe explains my fascination with creating collage of human faces. 

 

I’m always thrilled when people spot the hidden details in my work. The brain is drawn to decode images, it’s a survival instinct. When we see something and decode it one way, then realise it’s not what it seems, it can be as discomforting as it is delightful. I want people to walk away with a sense of intrigue, the realisation that the images have layer upon layer of hidden meaning, inviting metaphor, questions, commentary. As in life, when you pause and zoom in, things are rarely what they seem at first glance. 

I particularly enjoy exploring how the figure relates to the marks of the movement, whether these become a felt sense of something else, an extension of the figure, an integral part of it, or separate from it altogether. I found that drawing movement gets me into a place of active imagination (C. Jung) that connects with the dancer in me, and taps into my unconscious. 

At an initial stage, I enjoyed the process of absorbing the movement and then taking rest in one posture and focusing on it with all its integrity. I’d let myself immerse in the dance I observed, and I’d feel compelled to focus on a specific pose. At a later stage, I’ve worked from sketches of initial drawings, with the view to amplify their meaning.

As a psychotherapist, I am interested in aspects of duality and integration inherent to human experience. Each drawing brought me closer to my understanding of different parts of myself.

We’d like to thank our tutors for their time, patience and resourcefulness as they too have had to adapt and teach us through another year of ever-changing circumstances. We appreciate having this access to such an uplifting course despite all the challenges the pandemic has thrown up for us all.

We hope you enjoy the show!

EDAM Students
13 July 2021

Dates: 13/10/21 - 22/06/22
Time: 10:30 - 16:30

Evening
Vh796 Extended drawing for artists and makers

Dates: 13/10/21 - 22/06/22
Time: 18:00 - 21:00