Lüneburg Residency
Delighted to have received an Uwe Lüders Art Foundation Award, allowing me to have beeen resident in Lüneburg, Germany during the first three months of 2023.
The award provided funding for an uninterrupted three month period, in which a new body of work could begin to evolve for exhibition. A studio space and accommodation were also provided, at the historic Rote Hahn in this beautiful Hanseatic town.
Recipients of the award, [which is for two-dimensional drawing and painting], are encouraged to immerse themselves in a new environment, be freer to experiment and possibly to take their work in new directions.
Let’s Go Watercolour 80x60cm
The starting point for this new work is the concept of going “Forwards”. This seems appropriate on a personal level, given the fact I have spent three months working away from all that’s familiar. It’s also perhaps more generally relevant as we “re-launch” after the pandemic and live in times when too many are displaced through no fault of their own. Railway stations and airports passed through on travels seemed were an ideal place to start – and the many sketches already made whilst waiting around on journeys are finally being put to use!
graphite drawings, each 80x60cm
Using photos – as opposed to copying directly from them – can be helpful. Photoshop rapidly allows for the adjusting, collaging, layering, rotating and repeating of images to explore ideas. Taking photos of sketches and paintings in progress, then manipulating them, can take the original composition in new, more imaginative directions. These “digital sketches” are mostly source material rather than ends in themselves.
digital sketches
The sketchbook is of course a place to record observations but also to experiment with techniques and ideas. False starts and explorations on other papers/materials are collated too, so that it evolves into a journal of the project.
sketchbook pages
The aim for the exhibition will be a collection of work depicting people in transit. The challenge will be to represent how we feel when on the move. How can the transitory nature be portrayed? When on the move we occupy a kind of no man’s land; somewhere that is alien, but at the same time somewhere to which we all, at least temporarily, belong. We dissolve into the environment as we pass through it.
works in progress
