Elizabeth Nicholls
Figurative Gestural Artist
Drawing life, exploring line, forming connections.
Figurative Gestural Artist
Drawing life, exploring line, forming connections.
ARTIST STATEMENT
Why Lemons?
I discovered drawing lemons is like drawing the figure, same gestural sweeping lines, unexpected lumps n bumps, form and every lemon off a tree home grown is different. In combination with drawing and painting lemons in watercolour in the studio residency over two months offered to me at Gemini Winebar I also started walking the neighbourhood of Coburg plotting out where people had lemon trees in their front yards, the wandering opened up a wonderment of noticing the little things around Coburg, there are so many olive trees, fig trees and all sorts of wonderment plants. I love the sharing aspect of lemon tree, in the street I live in I think my neighbour has the biggest lemon tree in Coburg, it’s a privilege to me invited in for a coffee and the offer of a few lemons.
Also as a designer of diagrams, infographics and illustrations for predominate leadership/organisational consultants over the years, a unique original visual metaphor for presentations and workshop is a strength. Love a good metaphor ‘when life gives you lemons, make lemonade’….as a quiet sensitive creative child to quiet acting out young woman to mother and now more confident explore of connecting more as myself with others this life line so far has brought me in contact with interesting people who have pushed me in all unbalanced directions but have also taught lessons about myself. I love drawing people, it some how normalises everything for me and gives me a place a purpose.
Figurative Drawing
Figurative drawing informs my art & design practice; technically and emotionally. Through drawing I find space to contemplate, play and create work with layers of meaning. I explore a sprawling sense of joy and the theatrical in my work through spontaneous and decisive mark-making, movement, carving and abstracting the space within and around the mark making surface; utilising both human creativity & technology to respond, craft and record moments in time to be shared with others through visual storytelling.
Inspiration from the immediate, capturing a moment in time, initiator responder to figure, line, light, shadow, form to explore. I struggle to draw an image made up in my head it often comes out lifeless to me on the page. I find I need something to draw from.
I love gestural line and I fond that lemons hanging on a tree branch have the same lines and forms and the human figure, I was excited to draw them, explore them, endless possibilities.
The early works in the exhibition are my Butoh paintings. I first discovered Butoh on Youtube about 4 years ago I ended up watching Butoh clips all night and spent the next day Googling Butoh in Melbourne and discover Yumi Umiumare an established Butoh dancer, choreographer based in Melbourne These paintings were inspired by my participation in Butoh workshops and my observation of Butoh performers in rehearsals. The initial series of dynamic figurative drawings and watercolours captured the moving, twisting, shaking, and shrieking forms of the dancers, as well as the enlarged figurative shadows they cast across the rustic surfaces of the Oratory room at Abbotsford Convent.
“Little Butoh” was inspired by my daughter Lucy, who had the opportunity to dance with the Butoh performers and the happy spirits within the room one night. “Gateway” represents the act of facing fear and embracing adventure by taking the first step.
The final large canvas painting in the Salon room is a combination of response to lemons, stepping through the gateway to transform into the new, chasing, feeling and drawing with impulse not knowing what comes next but following where I’m being lead.
In the final canvas I am also chasing the feeling of movement and quick out of control watercolour on canvas not quite finished or is it.