Title: Celestial Bodies

Media: graphite, paint, and collage on paper

Dimensions: 57 cm x 85 cm

This series of drawings explore visual strategies that involve both elements of chance, where the artist allows visual material to be generated outside her control, and phases of more deliberate and controlled manipulation and adjustment of visual material.

Each drawing starts with an ‘accidental’ mark that in this case has been generated by an industrial paint spray can. The artist has responded to these marks by integrating them into a scene, often suggestive of a landscape, albeit an alien one, otherworldly and mysterious – reminiscent of the sci-fi genre.

Yet the drawings are bold and simple enough in their formal expression to register also as abstract compositions exploring the visual language of from, line, colour and texture. The drawings typically foreground a series of juxtapositions: between the bold metallic colours of industrial paint versus the muted greys of delicate pencil drawing, and between spontaneously generated shapes versus carefully considered hand-drawn marks. The drawings are simple and understated, yet nevertheless dynamic and full of contrast.