It has been a strange couple of weeks. Whilst feeling void of art in many ways and desperate to be working on something, my mind has been working overdrive but without me knowing it!!! I have been dreaming about my work...waking up, with vivid ideas entangled in my mind.
My work is strongly fuelled by how we exist and live amongst our environment and how architecture is changing and remoulding our surroundings and experiences. The trees that keep reoccurring in my work is something I am going to focus on. For me, they reference back to my landscape work, highlighting nature in a simple yet evocative way. They have the delicacy surrounded by the unfinished architectural chaos. Is that how it is perceived? Is it clear to the viewer?
Painting - Drawing - Photography
What will/do my drawings say that my paintings do not? My drawings have always been quite private, very rarely seen or displayed yet I now feel keen to be working with pencil and paper to play around with ideas.
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| 'Growing Towards The Light' by Victoria Ashworth |
Whilst reading and drifting in my studio I discovered the artist Henrik Saxgren. A series of photographs named 'Unintended Scultpures' is something he has been working on since 2001 and I was taken away by them. Reading the article, it seems that whilst working on other projects
Saxgren discovered that he was also moved by the aesthetic implications of man’s impact on his environment. The book, Unintended Sculptures, is the result of this revelation.
In this series, 'Saxgren has assumed a new role, not as story-teller, but as artist-curator. His trained eye seizes on the details of our landscapes, on the everyday absurdities or our abandoned things and our constructions. His is an everyday Surrealism that delights in the play of light on a man-made structure or an abandoned airplane. With every image Saxgren argues “Why is this remnant of a Icelandic whaling station with its brick smokestack and boiler set against a fjord in the amazing light of the high north not worthy of being as valuable an art work as any painting or sculpture?” That is a fair question, and with it, Saxgren makes us look at what we would otherwise take for granted or outright ignore.'
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| Henrik Saxgren |
Reading through this essay I love the quote by New York Time’s chief art critic, Michael Kimmelman, on the nature of art: The Accidental Masterpiece, On the Art of Life and Vice Versa (2005), in which he persuasively argues that “creating, collecting, and even just appreciating art can make living a daily masterpiece.”
Looking at another article, I was taken by this small snippet...'Tree lined avenues are some of the most visually attractive roads, and abandonment can transform them into some of the most mysterious. Forgotten houses set back from the road, cracked pavements and tangled greenery demonstrate perfectly the battle between man and nature, and emphasise how quickly manmade structures crumble when nature is left to take its course.'
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