RAPTURE ARTIST STATEMENT
'Rapture - a state or experience in which the spirit is exalted to a knowledge of divine things'
Rapture, will showcase a new series of large scale and medium charcoal drawings, created during the past year of ongoing lockdowns and isolation, which enabled a more intense and focused studio time.
Looking within, a time of introspection, no doubt contributed to these intimate and detailed views of the natural world. The charcoals depict intimate details from nature, vine wrapped tree trunks, bark covered gums, seaweed, plants and vines, micro views, up close and personal.
They were gradually built up in layers, much the same way as I approach my painting process. Drawing with sticks of willow charcoal, each and every mark is intimate and direct, fully aware of being made by hand. Tonal gradations, depth, light, dark, composition, contrast, subtleties are all woven together in their own complex web to build the drawings.
My love of working with charcoal and the drawing process intensified with the creation of these works, often very long hours over many weeks, totally absorbed in the visual language. Focusing on texture, tone, variation in mark making: delicate and tentative marks contrasted with forceful and dynamic mark making. Variations in charcoal from willow to compressed, velvety jet blacks to sensitive and subtle creation of light with willow and erasers, all interwoven in the drawing process.
This visual language, replicating the qualities found in the natural world - the twisted vines, floating bougainvillea and cast shadows, tree trunks, delicate and sinuous seaweed, all combining and interacting to find their own balance and harmony in nature.
The works delve into those states of the 'in between', exploring co-existing opposites, revealing what is tangible and intangible by sensitively navigating what to reveal and conceal.
My artwork has always been concerned with the juxtaposition of strength and fragility, the intimate and the distant, the fleeting and the solid, played out through the treatment of shadow and light, both simultaneously bold and subtle, precise and ambiguous.
In Rapture, the intricate and detailed beauty of micro views from the natural world are explored in depth with layered, tonal and observational charcoal works. These drawings allude to the extraordinary beauty in nature, the intimate details invite us to look within and at our surroundings. where we may find moments of awareness of both our place in the world, our connections to nature and a spiritual or emotionally calm place.
Kathryn Ryan