Orla Barry Artist and shepherd

In Cork last month, I saw part of this performance piece by Orla Barry, "reflecting on the primal, poetic and unpredictable bond we have with the natural world."

I was only there briefly, but there was time to watch her video about the imagined experience of one her lambs being taken to market and sold on .  Really moving.  The above link will give more information about this interesting artist.

Siobhan Davies, dance and body artist

Article here from January Guardian about the work of Siobhan Davies, the dancer and choreographer.  I personally really agree with her words:

"I think the mind is bloody wonderful, but the whole of us lives in the world and the whole of us communciates, the whole of us can fantasise and imagine.  I'd like us to turn the world around... We still hugely privilege the mind over everything else"

Davies collaborates with artists and scientists.  Her recent work, Material/rearranged/to/be refers to the idea of physical gesture: where it might come from and what it might mean"

As a source in this work, she used the extraordinary Mnemosyne Atlas (1924-1929) by Aby Warburg which shows how symbolic images and gestures reappear in different times and places throughout history... Warburg was curious about how the artists used the behaviour of the body to hold a thought"

Wellcome Collection - new views of the human body

Here are some experimental works from the Wellcome Trust space near Kings Cross, in London. I like the skeleton by William Cobbing, which shows are the skull and the pelvis (in the human anyway but probably in other species too) are possibly derived from the same form.

Martin Campos and the human in space

"He move always in relation to things, beside walls, raised terrace hedges.  He scans the periphery.  When he looks at Hana he sees a fragment of her lean cheek in relation to the landscape behind it.  The way he watches the arc of a linnet in terms of the space it gathers away from the surface of the earth.  He has walked up Italy with eyes that tried to see everything except what was temporary and human.

The one thing he will never consider is himself.  Not his twilit shadow or his arm reaching for the back of a chair or the reflection of himself in a window or how they watch him.  In the years of war he has learned that the only thing safe is himself"

Description of Sikh sapper Kip in "The English Patient" by Michael Ondaatje p. 218 (Picador paperback edition)

This quote reminds me of Martin Campos and his approach to art.  I am exploring it, but it seems to be about anchoring the figure in a spatial context.  Combining his exquisite figure drawing and painting with a looser abstract approach.  Above are some of my early attempts from his Ireland class in July.

Willam Dalrymple and the creative process

With many thanks to Alan Vest for this image

I like this remark by William Dalrymple in "My working day" series.

He is describing the final year of the four to five year project of writing a book:

"One year in four or five years you have to be completely eaten up by the book.  If it is working, you are really dreaming your book, not as a figure of speech, but in a very literal sense.  You are harnessing the power of your subconscious"

This perfectly describes the creative process, or one stage of it, and explains why it can be so draining.

Horse drawings

These drawings and oil sketches are about the volume of the horse and how the light falls on its body.

Self portrait

Diana Hand self portrait 2017

 

 

 

 

I am working on self portrait studies at the moment, slowly, very slowly beginning to grasp the construction of the head and face and translating that structure into colour.  It is better for me to begin a drawing as a base from which to venture into the complexities of colour.

I hope sometime to make drawings of other people and will bear in the ideas of Wolfgang Tillmans.

"For him, it is a collaborative act and a good "a good levelling instrument".  No matter who the sitter -.. even the artist himself - the process is chracterized by the same dynamics of vulnerability, exposure, honesty and always, to some extent, self consciousness... highlighting the relationship between appearance and identity."   

 Notes from the catalogue to Wolfgang Tillmans exhibition in Tate Modern (February to June 2017).