Tag Archives: Drawing

A perspective on drawing

Richard Talbot is currently Head of Fine Art and Professor of Contemporary Drawing at Newcastle University. His work includes large-scale drawings, sculpture, and more recently, video/installation. His research and studio practice is centred on contemporary drawing, but he brings to this a particular interest in the theory, history and practice of perspective. His interest in drawing, and in particular his use of perspective, has developed out of originally making sculpture and finding that drawing and the investigation of line, plane and space, lay at the root of much of his theoretical and creative concerns. This in turn has led to an investigation into many areas of drawing practice – but in particular, the role that linear perspective plays in that practice.

Reminders of a past

“The main focus of my work is the exploration of manmade forms, many of which have been gradually superseded, forgotten or abandoned. They were at the forefront of technology for their time but technology and purpose have left some of these structures behind and they have become architectural metaphors or reminders of a past. The work also looks at the idea of permanence and impermanence.”

Ian Chamberlain is a Senior Lecturer in MA Printmaking and Drawing and Print at the University of the West of England, Bristol. His work takes its influence from man-made structures. Reinterpreting them as monuments placed within the landscape, these objects in turn become landmarks of their time.

Material repetition

“I am looking at materiality and repeatedly putting it through the same process, so repetition is a key aspect of my vocabulary. By repeatedly putting something through the same process – or by repeating something and putting it in a different context – it becomes all too apparent that things can’t be repeated, that each one is totally unique and never the same.”

Lucinda Burgess’s background in painting, landscape design and oriental philosophy has led to a fascination with the raw elemental qualities of materials and inform a sculptural practice that accentuates the reality of constant change, undermining the idea of a fixed thing, object, entity or identity.

Contemplations

“My art seeks to give form to those processes of thought which have yet to be fully articulated and to explore the enormous scope of the beautiful and delicately balanced neural choreographies designed to reflect what is occurring in our own minds as we think.

In the ‘Contemplation’ series of drawings the process of repetitive mark-making enables a heightening of concentration, acting like a visual mantra or kasina, focussing shifting thoughts and intending to settle the mind of the practitioner.

Building up in layers, the work plays with the transitory nature of light and perception. The viewer becomes a part of the process, whose eyes move across the work, creating an opportunity of awareness into the temporal nature of reality and, hopefully, stillness of the mind.”

Albion

Stephen Walter’s drawings are a tangle of signs, words and images that draw the viewer into the artist’s intricate worlds. His work is crowded with today’s (sub)cultural symbols and obsessive tendencies; but it also celebrates traditional techniques, craftsmanship and Romantic notions of place.

Earth video talks

Featuring – Zaria Forman: Drawings that show the beauty and fragility of Earth ; Al Gore: The Case for Optimism on Climate Change ; Satish Kumar: Soil, Soul and Society ; Sam ‘Ohu Gon III: Lessons from a thousand years of island sustainability ; Tega Brain: Eccentric Engineering: Thoughts for the Anthropocene ; and Francesco Sauro: Deep Under the Earth’s Surface, Discovering Beauty and Science.

Thinking on the Pages of Sketchbooks

Elisa Alaluusua originates from Finnish Lapland and has been exhibiting internationally since the beginning of 1990s. Her first degree was in drawing (1991), since then she has completed two MAs, one in UK (Environmental Art, 1995) and one in Finland (Art Education, 1999), and practice-based PhD at the University of the Arts London (2016) on the topic of Sketchbooks. In 2015 she won the second prize in the prestigious Jerwood Drawing Prize with her video/drawing ‘Unconditional Line’.

This article is based on her PhD research ‘Sketchbooks – A Comparative Analysis of the Use of Sketchbooks by Contemporary Artists’ and makes an attempt to get a better understanding of how thinking happens on sketchbook pages and what visual form it might take.

Micro-Macro-Pattern

Michael Geddis is an emerging Northern Irish visual artist who specialises in drawing. He delights in the elegant beauty of natural forms and finds tiny microscopic structures particularly inspirational. Geddis worked as a Veterinary Surgeon for over 25 years before ill health forced his early retirement. He then enrolled at Belfast School of Art (Ulster University) and in 2013 graduated with First Class Honours in Fine Art. His degree show drawings drew acclaim at a national level when he won the James White Prize for Drawing at the RDS Annual Student Awards in Dublin. Since then, he has been developing his practice through a series of awarded artist residencies/bursaries, some collaborative projects and an Arts Council Lottery Funded project using micro-surgeons magnifying loupes to produce finely detailed drawings.

In this exclusive interview, he discusses his work and his thoughts on drawing.