SIOBHAN HUMSTON - statement stem & wing series They are literally a combination of my recent more minimal white series ‘stone/flora’ and the past colour and shape saturated work. Mentally they feel like arriving; emotionally they translate as organic explorations of my love of colour. Balance and clarity of thought were required to make these pieces but there was also certain physicality in the turning, lifting, wiping, and moving the paint and the matrixes. These factors communing with a meditative awareness of watching the images grow landed me in a new mindset with my painting practice and I believe, with each of the final pieces. They are half about place and half about the journey to that place. stone flora series This new body of work has grown from a series of over forty sketchbook drawings that I did while visiting Ireland in 2004 after a nine-year absence. I found the economic and societal changes substantial and in an attempt to cope with my overwhelming reactions and feelings of loss I found comfort in what I originally fell in love with Ireland for: the land. So, the drawings morphed into and on top of the paintings. The paintings lost the layers of colors and their sense of place. They grew into themselves with shades of white and colour became a sub-plot, a shadow. There is no attempt to finish each piece but instead, to allow the process to speak until it comes to quiet. In my mind, I breathe a scent of change, of growth, of clearing out and letting in; the idea of simultaneous loss and gain. What runs in and around our lives as we see trees come down and skies shattered and the new season that inevitably follows. Something raw tinged with sweet. These drawings are, to me, of stones yet they are translatable and abstract in their sensibilities. To some they are eggs, to others more obviously, they are floral in formation. They grow into metaphors for whatever the viewers’ story allows. Imploding, exploding. Evolving, disseminating. Dissolving, revolving. While creating in a somewhat meditative state, they seem to draw themselves. The process and the end seem to be a catharsis and a reflection of what I search for in my own life: simplicity, contrast and clarity. Joy. Siobhan Humston |
This body of work comes as a gathering of ideas surrounding the process of painting and the building of a finished piece. it involves an aesthetic balance between positive & negative, depth of colour & white; between drawing with graphite & painting with acrylic; between gravity & floating, motion & stillness, place & infinity.