Dr Sarah Walker talks about the Busnoys gig on her blog. Click the link to read.

I’ve just added my video of the work I did with students at Bruntcliffe School, Leeds to my artwork and education pages. We worked with the various ways to use digital projection technology to improve drawing skills, especially observational drawing of difficult subjects – like the human form in movement. The students grew in confidence as they became familiar with the methods. Engaged and focused, they completed a large body of work each over just three days.

Entrance: £8.00 (£5.00 concessions)
Doors 7.15pm
Music 8.15pm

Address: The Foresters Pub and Restaurant
1 North St, Egham, Surrey TW20 9RP

From Egham station make sure you are on the north
side of the railway, cross Station Road and walk along
Rusham Road until you see the pub on your right.
Small car park behind venue.
Public car park opposite Egham Station.
Enquiries to:
Tel.01784 438521
Email:drumpyne@aol.com
www.tallguyrecords.com

Tallguy Live Music Nights returns to The Foresters in Egham for a second series of gigs where folk musicians, jazz players and singer song writers rub shoulders, together with live dance and visual art. Come and hear some of the most beautiful and exciting new sounds around, right on your door step.

BBC Radio 3 presenter Sarah Walker is our M.C. for these three nights of fabulous contemporary music.
TREAT YOUR EARS TO SOME NEW SOUNDS!

Saturday May 21st
BUSNOYS – with special guest visual artist MARIA HAYES
Busnoys is the trio formed by vibes player Martin Pyne to showcase his jazz compositions. As well as his work in jazz he has had much of his music for contemporary dance performed at major London venues. Drummer Trevor Davies’ reputation keeps growing. His services have recently been enjoyed by the likes of Iain Ballamy, Byron Wallen, and Anita Wardell. Bass guitar virtuoso Jeff Spencer completes the line up of a band who draw on rock, country, electronica and the avant-garde as well as straight ahead jazz. Tonight they are joined by innovative artist Maria Hayes who will be creating new work as the music unfolds.

I am hard at work on the final PhD show. So far, I have done a third of the installation work and most of the exhibition drawings. The Selkie theme has re-emerged in this last phase. It was incomplete when I started the PhD so I continued to the work on the themes in Skin Deep. But after that performance I put the Selkie’s to one side and didn’t expect to come back to them until after completing this study. However, while I was considering what to do for my final show, June Tabor sent me her wonderful new CD “Ashore” and on it was a track she had recorded for my Selkie work. Suddenly I  could visualize how to proceed using the dance piece I directed for Skin Deep, footage of seals on Ynys Enlli, of the sea at Criccieth and the Llyn Peninsula and one of the Selkie drawings I did on Enlli rock in 2008. So the work spans 3 years, and covers the length of Wales from Blaenau Ffestiniog to Ynys Enlli to a beach in South Wales.

In mid October 2011 the School of Art at Aberystwyth will show the work as a curated exhibition of drawings framed and shown in a traditional white gallery space, while the adjacent gallery will become a black box with projected videos showing the process of making the drawings and the source material.

Spanning traditions and forms, swimming between time and tide the show will pool the principle methods, materials and approaches I have been exploring and working with during this period of research.

Ynys Enlli Seal Pup 2011

I thought I might begin to use this space to track my thoughts and experiences in this last year of my PhD.

I’m finding it really difficult to begin writing although I know I have to – I really should have been writing months ago. It’s been a difficult year health-wise, which hasn’t helped, but there is something else going on. It’s one of two things – or it could be both at once.

Firstly, I’m terrified – I feel as if I have the barest hold on academic writing and just the thought of doing it interferes with writing anything. So that’s FEAR.

Secondly, I am circling around something – something is about to emerge and I have a feeling that I just have to give it a little longer to make itself known to me. I hope that then all the work will make sense and a structure will present itself so the way to write will become clear. And this is the process of EMERGENCE.

Of course, the essay is less than half the story (40% to be precise) – but it feels a large part at the moment. The thesis must be led by the practice, so after months of reading I have left the books for now and am back in the studio. This time I have ordered the work in a logical way – not my usual following my nose style, and things are happening.

Line seems to be at the heart of the marks I make. What’s in a line? Well, it seems that the world can be there. My lines are made from observing movement. Line is the most economical and dynamic form to use to represent movement. It flows naturally from a kinaesthetic response to the subject, it is a consequence of movement itself. The first images we make as children involve lines as a result of having a marker in our hand that touches the ground (as in a receptive surface) as we move. Our first marks are for themselves, are a result of that joy in moving and engagement in seeing the trace of that movement left there to revisit visually.

The lines I make differ from those pure kinaesthetic engagements in that they are observational drawings. They are an attempt to connect as closely as possible the experience of observing movement with my eyes to the act of mark making with my hand. In the act of drawing I attempt to be one with the observed, to merge, to flow, to lose myself and find the other until observing and drawing transforms into communion.

This is intense work and I find it has a time limit. I work in short bursts of concentration, building up to it, acting then recovering and reflecting.

Interestingly, the work is becoming ever more abstract. The more I work with staying in the moment, staying with observing the subject, the less recognizable is the image. The recent works are pure movement drawings. Will the viewer be able to read them? Are they of any use beyond my studio?

It’s difficult to let go of the image and stay with the act, but it seems important to do so at the moment.

I’m drawing using video footage I made of the seals and a seal pup on Ynys Enlli last spring. First I project the video onto paper as a screen and draw straight into the video, directly on the paper. One of the effects of this is that as the ‘screen’ becomes saturated with the drawing, the video appears to disappear behind the drawing, giving a feeling of the seals hiding behind the lines.

Next I go to the easel and set up a third camera and a video mixer then draw with my hand mixed into the projected image. I am about 2-3 meters away from the projected image but can see my hand and where I am mark making. This allows me to see whether I am still with my subject or whether I have disappeared into the memory of what I was just looking at in the desire to make a drawing of it (therefore a figurative representation). I have to be vigilant with myself and keep to the task of drawing movement. I have to ignore the physical drawing and focus on keeping my hand and eye with and on the subject.

The drawings have a distinct quality, but they are abstract. I worry about that – although I love the process of making them and I enjoy the pure marks, and although I know the marks have integrity, which I think reads in the images, I notice a frustration in myself for figurative elements – for a more representational image. My work is usually figurative. However, I set myself the question ‘how do I draw movement?’ and in following that through – with the aid of digital technologies – I have arrived at abstract images. I find I have created a paradox. In using photographic and digital technologies that could enable me to make representational drawings I have ended up using them to draw out the abstract elements of observing movement. I have made drawings that do not seem to relate to the observable world, yet they are the most accurately observed drawings of movement I have yet made in 30 years of drawing movement.

Perhaps because I am so acutely aware of what I am looking at in representational terms as I draw into video or through the mixer in live situations I am fighting my own conditioning? Abstract images usually come about through other processes. Either an artist takes themselves away from the subject and together with an interaction with the materials allows a distillation process to access the essence of form, colour, line, shape and so on; or the process itself demands an abstract response – drawing music, drawing from touch or from (the artists) movement.

It is usual to aspire to and attain a figurative image when working closely from observation. Perhaps my own training and expectations are getting in the way of simply allowing the work to work? I think I need to put my frustration aside and keep doing the work, to see what happens.

It’s been a busy Summer and Autumn. I’ve been continuing with my research and have been to France, Cornwall,Vancouver, London and Leeds.

I went to the Dordogne region in France to view at first hand some of the earliest known paintings in the caves. They are wonderful. I then traveled up to Brittany to see the alignments at Carnac and the carvings on Gavrinis.

In Cornwall I saw more megalithic art and more recent work at Tate St Ives and The Barbara Hepworth Museum.

During my week in Vancouver I worked with Kristin Carlson on a dance and projection drawing film which I have now edited – but I’m having problems completing the edit due to compatibility issues. Hopefully these will be resolved soon. The piece is called ‘Raven Dance, Selkie Song’ and is inspired by artifacts, myths and rituals from both First Nations and Celtic culture as well as being an improvised conversation.

Whilst in Vancouver I took part in video eye tracking experiments with Hector Larios at SIAT (School of Interactive Arts and Technology) in Simon Fraser University, Surrey. We looked into how my eye and hand work together in observational drawing, both drawing still subjects and moving ones. The results are very exciting.

In London I had the opportunity to interview Philip Steadman who wrote ‘Vermeer’s Camera’ and Eileen Adams who works for The Big Draw and the Drawing Campaign. In addition I saw the Edwaerd Muybridge exhibition at Tate Britain, plus shows at the V+A, Tate Modern and the National Gallery.

Finally, I have spent three days in Bruntcliffe High School in Leeds working with 6th form students on observational drawing with the projection technology. On day two we had three musicians from Opera North to draw which was both exciting and inspiring.

Now I’m home to the studio and the snow to think about it all and begin to write it all up.

This video was made in the studio, Ben playing while I drew him using the projector and mixer technology. Our rhythms mixed as we worked and as Ben’s musical focus turned increasingly inward so mine became more intense as the drawing progressed. In the final minutes of the video I have double tracked his playing to reflect this energy.

View the video on the Artworks page.

Gwawr Gwaith Powdwr (Explosive Works Dawn)

Gwawr Gwaith Powdwr is a film that celebrates the new dawn of use for this landscape. Until very recently this was the site of an explosives factory for the local mines.
Now the land is being returned to nature and open to the public for walks.

This film was commissioned for and premiered a
“Have a Blast” Wildlife and Art Festival,
Gwaith Powdwr Nature Reserve, Penrhyndeudreath 24/25 July 2010.

Commissioned by Discover Gwynedd for the London 2010 Cultural Olympiad.

View the film on the Artworks page.

Tiger

I was allowed into the Tiger cage at the Welsh Mountain Zoo to draw at close quarters using the digital projection technique. It was a fantastic hour. The head keeper was with me and we had agreed that at the first sign of any distress the Tiger would be let out. He had just been fed so I don’t think he was viewing me as seconds. The space was very constricted but just big enough. Bryn the Tiger settled quite quickly and even seemed to enjoy being in the space with me. He was calm except when I moved or changed the paper or water. He then let me know he was watching me with a bit of a roar or growl. The keeper said he wasn’t being particularly aggressive, that it was just ‘Tiger’. Perhaps because I have lived with cats all my life I wasn’t phased, they really are big cats. He was very co-operative and allowed me to draw for an hour before letting us know he had had enough, at which point we let him out straight away. I did a few drawings, I’m happy with two or three and edited this film to demonstrate the process and share with you the excitement of being this close, this intimate with a tiger.

See the film Tiger on the artworks page.

Tiger

My new, very personal film, Watch Your Back is now available to view on the Artwork page. The performance took place in the middle of the night. I worked instinctively then formed the piece through the editing process.

Watch Your Back 2010