INTERSTICE SERIES
Imagined spaces, based on war-ruin architecture, 2020
In this series, I imagined brutally functional imagined architecture, evoking Shetland’s war-ruins. However, space is inconsistent here - tonal areas suggest planar surfaces, but ambiguous light and illogical lines confuse the eye and cause the viewer to make sudden changes in perception of depth, causing disorientation. Instead of being grounded in a particular space, the viewer is always in a place of in-between. This was a new direction in my ongoing investigations into perspectival space, inspired by tonal studies in ‘Perspectives’ (below). Previously I’d explored a sense of space dissolving away through manipulation of blended tone and fragmenting lines, but this series has taken things in a more abstract direction, with ambiguous shapes and planes starting to separate away from an illusionary perspectival system.
BLAST WALL
2020
I am also influenced by themes of Modernist-utopia and ‘cult of progress’. Inspired by movements including Romanticism and Vorticism, I’m interested in how aspects of the utopian are often bound up with a wish to conquer nature, which seems especially pertinent today when we are increasingly aware of our impact on the environment.
PERSPECTIVES
Drawings from Shetland's war ruin sites, 2019
Continuing an interest in exploring linear perspective through Shetland’s war ruins, these graphite pencil drawings are all in two-point perspective. This ‘corner-on’ viewpoint allows for views beyond and through in images, and can also give a greater sense of expansive realism. In these concrete war-constructions however, stark walls enclose interior spaces, and corridors often lead nowhere or stop suddenly. Drawing these spaces is mostly about rendering blocks of tone - considering how areas of light and dark contrast and relate to show depth. The sense of order this creates in the images, the feeling of planes of space fitting together like a puzzle, is disrupted by small elements of decay that are included. Cracks, stained walls, or rusty metal-work tell of the passage of time, and remind us of the more sinister purpose of these constructions, which can at first sight easily resemble Modernist architecture.
WAR RUINS OF SHETLAND
A series of drawings from Shetland's war ruin sites. 2015 - 2017
In these works, I was interested in creating a tense sense of space and depth using strong perspective, with the vanishing point placed in the centre of each drawing. Together with using tracing paper, this approach gave an eerie atmosphere, the image seeming to draw the viewer in, yet also seeming forever 'beyond' in its translucency.