Structure Series/Restless Structures, Drawings 2008 - 2009
ON THE MAKING OF MARKS…
Some thoughts by Ian Wieczorek
Drawing. It’s a word we are all familiar with, so much so we tend to lose sight of its full compass of meaning. Remember, you can also draw conclusions, draw blood, draw attention. That sense of extraction, of eliciting, of drawing out, is at the heart of the activity we call drawing.
One of the first creative acts that we engage in as children, drawing is also one of the oldest recorded creative activities, dating back some 30-40,000 years. If early drawings were intended to record, instruct or exert shamanistic power is open to conjecture. Regardless, it is clear that drawing is an activity that is hard-wired into the human psyche as a communicative act.
Drawing is a record of the moment of engagement between an artist and a subject - whether that subject exists in the real world or whether it resides in the imagination or subconscious. Or somewhere in between. What drawing represents is an initial physical creative response: unmediated, reflexive, direct, honest.
Which brings me to Betty Gannon’s Restless Structures, a title that eloquently refers both to its subject matter and also the process of drawing itself. Located in the familiar notional geography of architectural construction, Gannon’s drawings explore the buildings in the processes of construction and demolition. Rather than literal visual studies of buildings, these works draw from the dynamic that exists between chaos and order, embodying the energy of transformation implicit in these processes of change.
Using formal visual metaphors, together with a wide variety of marks, media and application, Gannon’s drawings juxtapose and interweave areas of stability and repetition with looser, more gestural passages. The results are evocative embodiments of structures in flux, created through a rich and lyrical visual language of mark-making, at times meditative, at other times almost violent in execution, a combination of control and freedom that elegantly reflects the nature of the subject matter at hand.
Scale is another factor at play in these bold and confident works. The viewer is invited to engage with Gannon’s drawings in both small, intimate pieces and on a scale that is at times almost overwhelming. These drawings offer both moments of contemplation and a great joy of sensual discovery, the results of Gannon’s visual understanding and the inventive interplay between media and mark-making.
In Restless Structures, Betty Gannon has created a body of work that is visually rich and highly engaging. There is much to savour here. Enjoy.
Ian Wieczorek, 2010
(Ian Wieczorek is a visual artist, writer and curator)
Some thoughts by Ian Wieczorek
Drawing. It’s a word we are all familiar with, so much so we tend to lose sight of its full compass of meaning. Remember, you can also draw conclusions, draw blood, draw attention. That sense of extraction, of eliciting, of drawing out, is at the heart of the activity we call drawing.
One of the first creative acts that we engage in as children, drawing is also one of the oldest recorded creative activities, dating back some 30-40,000 years. If early drawings were intended to record, instruct or exert shamanistic power is open to conjecture. Regardless, it is clear that drawing is an activity that is hard-wired into the human psyche as a communicative act.
Drawing is a record of the moment of engagement between an artist and a subject - whether that subject exists in the real world or whether it resides in the imagination or subconscious. Or somewhere in between. What drawing represents is an initial physical creative response: unmediated, reflexive, direct, honest.
Which brings me to Betty Gannon’s Restless Structures, a title that eloquently refers both to its subject matter and also the process of drawing itself. Located in the familiar notional geography of architectural construction, Gannon’s drawings explore the buildings in the processes of construction and demolition. Rather than literal visual studies of buildings, these works draw from the dynamic that exists between chaos and order, embodying the energy of transformation implicit in these processes of change.
Using formal visual metaphors, together with a wide variety of marks, media and application, Gannon’s drawings juxtapose and interweave areas of stability and repetition with looser, more gestural passages. The results are evocative embodiments of structures in flux, created through a rich and lyrical visual language of mark-making, at times meditative, at other times almost violent in execution, a combination of control and freedom that elegantly reflects the nature of the subject matter at hand.
Scale is another factor at play in these bold and confident works. The viewer is invited to engage with Gannon’s drawings in both small, intimate pieces and on a scale that is at times almost overwhelming. These drawings offer both moments of contemplation and a great joy of sensual discovery, the results of Gannon’s visual understanding and the inventive interplay between media and mark-making.
In Restless Structures, Betty Gannon has created a body of work that is visually rich and highly engaging. There is much to savour here. Enjoy.
Ian Wieczorek, 2010
(Ian Wieczorek is a visual artist, writer and curator)
