It’s funny how often people used to say to me, “your art work is quite ‘deep’ isn’t it?” or “do you always work in monochrome?”, perhaps hoping for a glimpse of colour.
Fleeting Memories of a Seascape (Lithograph, 2004)
The one review I ever got from a Sydney Morning Herald critic even described my art work as “post-apocalyptic”. I suppose that’s where the art work detaches from the artist and becomes the ownership of the viewer - laid bare for interpretation.
It’s interesting though, that all those years I drew in charcoal or created etchings and lithographs in black ink, I relished the world of monochrome, enjoying the theatricality and drama it provoked, despite working with fairly innocuous subject matter: retrieving scraps of memory, symbols of childhood or recreating fading coastal scenes.
Curiosity Gathering (Charcoal Drawing 2012)
Ironically, colour arrived around 5 years ago in 2013, when I started facing my own ‘darker’ subject matter. Fighting health scares, and in the aftermath of intrusive surgery, my drawings were suddenly flooded with colours, bright ‘happy’ colours. To my surprise, an array of tones from blues to pinks, oranges and yellows now permeated the pages. I suppose the colour was some kind of therapy after the stark hospital environment. Kind folks said, “How pretty!” or “I love the colours!”, all the while ignoring the drawn lines and darker symbols of surgical instruments and human organs within the works.
I laughed at the irony .. that drawings addressing my deepest fears were disguised as “pretty” … and that perhaps, rather subversively, I saw ‘trauma’ in colour.
With a contrary nod to Dorothy stepping out of her sparse black and white Kansas reality into the technicoloured yet insecure world of fantastical Oz, I stepped out of my faded imaginary world of memories into a brightly coloured physical reality.
Surgical Procedures (Watercolour 2013)
Fast forward to 2018 and that colour still exists in my work, but the work itself has transformed into a new reality. Nowadays the colour palettes are perhaps more muted (with the occasional bright 'pop').
The subject matter is still insistent on nostalgic seaside imagery (that good old West Pier!) but has diversified into all sorts of other areas too. I've packed the charcoal away (for now), since being a mother with limited time and space (and tiny creeping fingers always at the ready to snatch things) has meant I have had to change my working method in order to keep going. Enter laptop and drawing tablet stage left! Thanks to a chance encounter with an old art school friend at the park last year, I discovered the world (rather, the infinite universe) of surface pattern design. And after taking a brave leap and enrolling into an online course to learn everything I could about 'digitalising' my art work, here I am. And so begins a new chapter.
There is definitely a side of me that still craves the messy, inky fingers, the smell of etching ink, the alchemy of printmaking, and the spontaneous and vigorous process of producing a huge charcoal drawing. That side is just calmly and patiently resting until one day I will have the space and time to get more physical with my art again. For now, however, I am quite happy in my little digital world of illustrating and pattern making.
Please check in with me along the way. I'd love to take you on this 'walk along the pier' too!
A Walk along the Pier (Illustration refined through Adobe Photoshop 2018)