The Dobell Drawing Prize was originally held annually at the Art Gallery of NSW, initiated by the Gallery and the Trustees of the Sir William Dobell Art Foundation. The Prize aims to encourage excellence in drawing and draughtsmanship among Australian Artists. This year my drawing “ Dusk Hill End was fortunate enough to be selected as one of the 50 finalists to go on exhibition at the National Art School in Sydney.
About my Drawing “ Dusk Hill End”
The subject depicted in my work illustrate an internal
thought process that is based on personal memory and focuses on an implied journey through time, i.e. Drawing at Hill End in the late afternoon . Although the drawing is based on a photograph, my aim was to deconstruct the representation portrayed, into vertical lines of tone, turning the photographic image into a series of atmospheric sensations which are reminiscent of a memory. I transcribe the image onto paper with a graphite pencil, enlarging the scale of the image then apply the tonal variations through a hatching technique of small vertical lines with black pen. My technique creates a blurring of focus and emphasises the tonal structure of each image through the loss of edges. In this work the drawn mark evokes the fragility of remembering, as the mark making creates a movement causing it to move from a past to a present. The drawn line also relates to the concept of memory consisting of a mass of marks that are designated into what we have seen, heard and felt.