Inertia - Drawing Statement

Initially, my drawing project began as an extension of my self-directed work; I intended to look at the female nude in the medium of pure drawing, I began with life-drawing and working from photographs, and intended to explore feminism through the female anatomy. However, I quickly found that I was lacking motivation and felt that I was struggling to work with the same subject in two completely different ways without getting confused and over-complicating my work. 

I found during my critiques that it was very surreal watching people discuss my work - talking about my drawings and discussing the model's form and the attitude suggested by her body without actually realising that in many drawings I was the model. Around this time my emotions were very up and down and it really affected my motivation and the amount of work I was producing; I decided that I would use my theme of anonymity as a way to produce work about these feelings that would hopefully turn my demotivation into therapeutic and positive work. 

I discovered the Broken Light Collective which is an art project that displays the work of photographers who suffer from mental, emotional and personality disorders, or are close to people with these conditions, as a form of therapy and encouragement for these artists to continue to have faith in themselves and take comfort in their work. I was so touched by this collective's ambition and I discovered one artist, Fleur Alston, who's work about her daughter's anxiety particularly moved me. I also discovered the painter Romy Campe, who paints distorted facial expressions in abstract, emotive colours and uses distressed mark-making patterns.

Once I turned my project around I really got into the work, and my motivation picked up again; interestingly I found that expressing my emotions in my work was exactly what I needed to get back to normality. My work is a mix of drawing, photography and image transfer, for my final outcome I chose to reproduce a photo as an image transfer, comprising of 16 A4 boards, I felt that the enormity of my piece would convey the overwhelming nature of my emotions at the time; the disjointed boards and distressed marks from the image transfer add to the feeling of despair and negative emotion. I feel that this has been one of my most successful projects, not only due to the actual work I produced, but due to the effect the work had on me personally.