A while ago, I wrote a blogpost about my series 'Redemption Day Is Not Installed'. Quite an intense, dark, gloomy series of drawings made with pencil, ink and watercolours. I tried to describe that, to me, this series was about the uncompromising character of guilt, especially undeserved and (often) self-inflicted guilt and how it's almost impossible to break free of it. And how to redeem oneself can be an obligation that has the potential to turn into a burden itself.
It is an extremely heavy load to carry with you.
It's a series I am certainly not done with. Not for a long time. So, here are a couple of new ones in the making. Still using the same materials and imagery, but with the addition of some other type of creatures and colours, moving from the colder blue and greenish, even turqoise shades from the first drawings to more intense reds and purples. But still, not any warmer. It's still quite a harsh place to dwell in.
Furthermore, I have been playing with the idea of exploring this theme and visualisation in a more theatrical type of setting, perhaps adding little sculptures or otherwise 3D figurines to the scene. Not sure yet, but some ideas worth looking into, so .. hope to show you all more of that in the near future!
For now, I hope you like these new drawings in the making!
So, this time last year, I was in the middle of a very unsettling time for me, as I had to sell my house and embarked on a journey into the unknown, living the life of, as I started calling it, a 21st century city nomad. By that I mean not someone who's not really homeless as in living on the streets (which I am eternally glad for, because that is a hard, harsh life that I do NOT wish for anyone to happen at anytime), but still someone who does not have a place of her own to live in. Like, some kind of 'home hoppper' or 'pop up resident'. Or whatever fancy term you'd like to use for it.
By Summer 2015, I'd created tons of Witty Art, bascially driven by the fear of not being able to draw or create art for a long, long time to come. You see, losing my house not only meant losing my home, the roof over my head, but also my studio, the birthplace of so much Witty Art. So indeed I feared a long period of creative drought would set in.
Luckily for me, that hasn't happened, really. If anything, quite the opposite. Thanks to the support and care of people very close to me, who realised that, without my art, without being to able to create my art, I am just half the woman I am. Sounds a bit dramatic, I know, but it's true. To me, creating Witty Art is an urge. A matter of being alive and awake or being alive and virtually dead inside. So, I kept drawing, in my Witty Art Book 'My Life In Limbo', but also started working on new series, rediscovering basic materials such as pencil and charcoal, and discovering other ways of expressing myself.
The result has been many new Series and Singles over the last 12 months or so. As well as a couple of great opportunities to showcase my work. So, instead of drought there was a wave of inspiration and of new creations appearing and re-appearing.
But, while archiving the digital images of all the stuff created last summer, shortly before having to leave my home, I realised that I just hadn't shared much of the art I created during the final days spent in that house. Because I kept drawing as long as I could, untill I had to even pack up all my art, sending them off into a safe storage untill I would be able to work in a proper studio again.
So, here are some of the drawings I was working on last year, around this very time. I have to admit, I was even a bit scared of having to look at them again as I feared they'd reveal too much of my personal feelings and emotions at that time. But, it turns out it's not all that bad.
Let's just say that the world, my world, is still NO solid playground, but then again, it never really was. And ultimately, I am kind of okay with that. Because if indeed that had been the case, I doubt if there ever would have been such a thing as Witty Art.
So, here's the first EVER preview of what, in time, is going to be yet another expression or even manifestation of Witty Art! Moving from 2D to 3D, here's the first try out sample of Witty Art Puppetry, created by my Studio PuRRR's fellow creative mastermind Deborah van de Beld (a costume designer and fabric connaisseur in her own right AND a highly skilled culinary artist and who'll be launching her own House of Westenwind over the coming months).
I have always envisioned my artwork coming alive, both old skool, as in: handmade, crafted with various materials; and digitally, perhaps in a form of stop motion animation. But for a number of reasons, I never got around to figuring that all out. Something to do with living in the hell of crippling self doubt, fear of failure and - less prozaic - other projects and businesss stuff demanding too much of my time. So I basically stuck to drawing - don't get me wrong, I LOVE it and drawing and painting will always be a necessity to me, as I sometimes simply just have to do it or I'll go mad. But other plans, ideas, dreams, well .. they just got postponed.
So it is great to have someone motivating me to pick up where I left and start working again towards a three-dimensional world of Witty Art, one way or the other.
In short: to be continued...
This particular series, 'A Matter Of Trust', created back in 2014, deals with some pretty basic human emotions, if not one of the most basic: trust. A small, simpel word, but o so crucial for human relationships. A word too often used too lightly, misused, abused. And I guess we all are or have been guilty of that, at one or more times in our life. Of abusing someone's trust. Ignored, overlooked, brushed aside. I know I have done so, probably not once, not twice, but a couple of times.
Then again, my trust too, has been stood upon, trampled, crushed, many times. And as I am only human, that left some pretty nasty scars. Perhaps there a few of them visible, tangible, in this series. Then again, I am not revealing everything. I am not sure, after all, if I can trust you, can I?
After all, trust is an extremely precious good to give. Trust. A precious good to give, yet so very easy to waste. And once gone, extremely hard to obtain back. As a matter of fact, it's often not just 'A Matter Of Trust'.
Trust me, I know...
So, yes, recently I've been on bit of a drawing spree - skip that, I have been suffering of one of those almost all-consuming attacks of GottaDraw, which I jokingly refer to as ''my favourite disease''. The result is a whole bunch of drawings, Singles mainly, but also a couple of new Series.
One of these involves this particular character. And again, it is yet another manifestation of UnBunny making an appearance in my work. For those of you who have been following my work over the years, UnBunny is no uncommon inhabitant of the World of Witty Art. He's also one of the most popular ones and he's constantly evolving and appearing in different forms and shapes, in various singles or series of drawings, like 'Innovation In Carnation', 'Innovation In Corporation', 'H.U.R.T' and, more recently, 'Redemption Day Is Not Installed'.
So, here he is again, this time in a series titled 'One Step Forward (How Many Steps Back'). As life often feels that way for many of us, I think both the images and the subtitles speak volumes.
Hope to be able to post each individual image on this blog soon!
Recently, I have been on a bit of a drawing spree, and I found myself creating a lot of new Witty Art. A couple of new Series and a lot of Singles, and a couple of two and even three-pieces. It's been a while since I've been working with ink and watercolours but it felt extremely good to be able to do so again.
It turned out to be quite a good harvest. I witnessed the return of some old characters and ideas, but in new shapes and forms; as well as the birth of new ones, some of which really surprised me, but in a good way. I can see new, previously undiscovered pathways, waiting to be explored and yes, I am eager to do so, at the same time, just a bit scared of what I might discover while doing just that. But the need to go onward and forward has the better of me!
I will post individual pictures of each work soon, for now, here is a small selection!
Back in 2013, I created a series of drawings called ''Such A Sudden Cold'', which portrays a lonely figure, caught or even stuck in dark surroundings, unable to break away from it, while being under threat by another persona, which is clearly after him. Whether this persona's intention is to safe him from the black hole he's stuck in or to push him even further into the abyss, isn't sure.
The only thing is that the density of the ''hole'' varies in each artwork, from a pitchblack and dense darkness in some drawings, to a more lucid kind of grey in others. In some drawings, the figure to the right appears to be less of a threat, not attacking but even reaching out to the prisoner, sometimes even turning away from him, as to shield himself.
The whole atmosphere of this series to me, indeed, is that of a sudden coldness that can overcome you when find yourself thinking of not too pleasant things from the past. The kind of memories that leave your whole body and mind frozen, not being able to breathe while trying not to relive them. The kind that chills you to the very bone.
Definitely not the kind of frozen 'never could bother Elsa anyway' but a far more dystopian sense of all consuming cold.
There are currently a total of seven of this series. Five of them have been on display in 2013, at the opening exhibition of my project Sint Maria's Gallery, a now closed down pop up gallery in Rotterdam. Later on, early 2015, I showed another two during the Maak Het Mee Pop Up Expo at the Josephlaan, also in Rotterdam.
Currently, I am not so sure whether this series is finished or not, as I didn't have any time over the last couple of months to study it properly. So I will have to see how this one will develop, or not, once I will have a closer look at it again. See if the black hole is able to swallow me this time!
