pamelaspeight1
Precarious: Resilient
2015, charcoal and soft pastel on Stonehenge paper, 38 x 50 inches (96.5 x 127 cm)
website: pamelaspeight.com/
Precarious is a series of drawings about the delicate balance between life and death in landscapes once familiar but now utterly altered by human activity and carelessness. We have created a culture in which there is a constant flux between ugliness and beauty. We enter a state of grace through our art, writing, music, architecture, dance, yet we also leave behind islands of plastic garbage at sea and the hideous carcasses of industrialization that cannot be biologically reabsorbed into the earth.
The images in this group of drawings have a human presence evident in vestigial structures, yet there is absence too. The emotional impact of changes we have wrought on the planet cannot be denied. Brutal deforestation, fires, flooding, drought, accelerating rates of species extinction are disturbing, yet there is a fascination for them imposed on our consciousness.
There are events occurring that are dark, painful and contradictory, yet essential to contemplate and articulate. We have the capacity to reflect, to resist looking away. Precarious acknowledges the paradox of our ability to both create and destroy that exists within all of us. It is also part of my ongoing exploration of a deep connection with nature held by many of us. In a sense these drawings are both an expression of grief and a catharsis. The subject is a painful one that speaks to our vulnerability. There is beauty in decay, which is associated with nourishing new life. Yet will the immense changes taking place now lead to this outcome? What forms of life might survive? What others may unintentionally be generated?
There is material irony in this series about life on the edge. Charcoal is carbon, or burned and compressed organic material. Soft pastel pigments are mined. As such, there are elements of destruction within the creative process.
Precarious: Resilient
2015, charcoal and soft pastel on Stonehenge paper, 38 x 50 inches (96.5 x 127 cm)
website: pamelaspeight.com/
Precarious is a series of drawings about the delicate balance between life and death in landscapes once familiar but now utterly altered by human activity and carelessness. We have created a culture in which there is a constant flux between ugliness and beauty. We enter a state of grace through our art, writing, music, architecture, dance, yet we also leave behind islands of plastic garbage at sea and the hideous carcasses of industrialization that cannot be biologically reabsorbed into the earth.
The images in this group of drawings have a human presence evident in vestigial structures, yet there is absence too. The emotional impact of changes we have wrought on the planet cannot be denied. Brutal deforestation, fires, flooding, drought, accelerating rates of species extinction are disturbing, yet there is a fascination for them imposed on our consciousness.
There are events occurring that are dark, painful and contradictory, yet essential to contemplate and articulate. We have the capacity to reflect, to resist looking away. Precarious acknowledges the paradox of our ability to both create and destroy that exists within all of us. It is also part of my ongoing exploration of a deep connection with nature held by many of us. In a sense these drawings are both an expression of grief and a catharsis. The subject is a painful one that speaks to our vulnerability. There is beauty in decay, which is associated with nourishing new life. Yet will the immense changes taking place now lead to this outcome? What forms of life might survive? What others may unintentionally be generated?
There is material irony in this series about life on the edge. Charcoal is carbon, or burned and compressed organic material. Soft pastel pigments are mined. As such, there are elements of destruction within the creative process.