Joanna Thomas

graphite, willow charcoal, pastel, metallic ink, on pastel paper
65cm x 50cm
Title: Truth Burden

“doodling is simultaneously a process and an image … a visual way of tracing one’s thoughts” - Diana Cooper.
Diana makes abstract work that emerges from her mind, body and experiences. My process explored the relationships between animism, therapeutic encounters, the physicality of creating art and the imaginal realm. A multi-dimensional emergence occurred through repetitive weaving of a living Willow nest. Weaving became doodling, the physical joined the metaphysical.

Sitting with the nest the sketches expressed: earthly matter, wounds and scars; visceral encounters with a healing psyche, its burdens and gifts; human endeavour merging with spirit. In the studio I employed a critical hierarchy of the pleasing elements with slow, deliberate mark-making to retain the original energy.

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During OFCAD I developed a sketching practice, moving from draughts-person to artist and shifted a fear of graphite and charcoal through experimentation. The expressive life drawing tutor said “no one knows what art is, so just do your truth” which raised my curiosity and guided my project. An early tutorial was pivotal in creating an outdoor practice, dropping negative scripts and finding confidence in my hands... find the essence by drawing from positions of emotion, memory and imagination. The energy is aboriginal, pre-verbal, elemental and archetypal; it tells an old story. I will reproduce this meditative state of drawing authentically, so that lines and shapes are true. I will respond to my animism and deep ecology with my art.

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STUDENT SHOWS

Joanna Thomas