REVISED COURSE PLAN and ARTIST’S STATEMENT
The Soliloquy was essential in highlighting the direction of my work. I was able to analyse areas of my approach to painting and drawing and reach a much clearer and more confident understanding of where I wanted to take the work.
REVISED COURSE PLAN
IDENTITY and PLACE
The work has always been about identity but the crucial point is, What do I identify with? In the beginning stages of the course I was identifying with ‘age’ and so my research and images focused on elderhood. My research soon led me to the point that ‘age’ as such was irrelevant in the practice of art and so my focus, still on identity, shifted. As the demands of the course have increased, it has led me to a clearer sense of my identity as a migrant through my art practice and I am exploring issues about place, memory and home. Bird sound and landscape are closely linked in memory for me. I’ve discovered that hearing the call of birds or the national accents of people or catching the smell of the ocean hitting the rocks can open up memory landscapes.
The critical essay has been significant in understanding home and place. It has led me to a greater confidence in my art practice – why I love drawing, why I paint the way I do, the significance of line and texture in my work. It has taken me beyond the boundary of homeland to explore place in a much wider sense. The central focus of my work is the natural world. I am exploring the wonder and endless mystery of plants, trees through drawing and painting in order to bring focus to the need to care for our world.
PROCESS
The investigation into ‘place’ has brought process to the fore. Through the work, the importance of drawing as significant in my art practice continues to dominate and can’t be ignored. I am finding that drawing is actually a ‘place’ for me and consequently in being in that drawing space, I am happiest. I need to work with this realisation.
Colour, like sound, is very evocative and it will always be a strongly expressive element of my work. I will be exploring how to develop my connection with drawing into my painting and investigating new and different ways of applying paint.
Strands to take forward
- Place – during the writing of the critical essay, I became interested in the concept of The work of Anselm Kiefer led me into this and even though his work is on a national level I’m interested in the idea of landscape as ever changing, renewing itself, never static. An initial response to the devastation of the Brazilian rainforest by fire has begun this body of work exploring images which focus on caring for our world.
- The natural world. Caring for our world in these times is vital. My drawing in particular focuses on the wonder and beauty around us and aims to encourage more awareness in our responsibility during the challenge of climate change.
- Sound and memory. This has been a long standing interest, in particular bird sounds. My work explores how other senses beyond seeing can reveal new views onto our world. Memory for a migrant brings different unexplored images which relate to feelings, sound, smells – forgotten yet remembered.
REVISED ARTIST’S STATEMENT
The work is about joy, hope and energy…unapologetically. The painter, Bonnard, was known as ‘the painter of happiness’. I would like to borrow that label. Our world needs joy and hope and I believe art has the capacity to provide a glimpse of these qualities. A lifetime’s experience has given me a very personal viewpoint which comes through the painting in subject matter and process. The ordinary, the old and discarded, the hidden places of our world as well as the beauty of the natural world all provide images to be explored through drawing and paint. The images hover between representation and abstraction.
PATRICIA FARRAR 