LAMENTATION
“Lamentation”, 44 x 64”, Charcoal on Paper, 2022.
The history of my creative practice is rooted in traditional drawing and painting, but informed by a love for dance and movement. The opportunity to play with spatial depth, to flatten space and create specific areas of interest, allows me to dictate the sequence of observation and introduce narrative.
Giotto’s “Birth of the Virgin”, as well as Delacroix’s, “Massacre at Chios”, both served as inspiration for my drawing “Lamentation”. The front of the picture plane, like a frieze or stage, is where all the action takes place, with the background like a scrim. From Botticelli’s, “Mary with Child and Singing Angels”, I borrowed the technique of making all the heads the same size, regardless of the placement of the figures. Instead of architecture built to enclose the figures, a weird visual space is created for the figures to inhabit, without an infinite horizon or deep space. These Pre-Renaissance techniques for creating space combine well with a contemporary application of photography for image reference. Moments framed in snapshots are stitched together, with the separate images built up on the surface of the artwork. It’s not one single view, but a view that unfolds over time.