My partner is a modular musician, so there is music or sound (not always musical!) all around the house every day. The notion that music doesn't exist until it is played absolutely fascinates me and to see this big rack of buttons, sliders, and dials with its spaghetti tangle of cables and blinking lights suddenly burst into life at the flick of a switch is a wonder. Where was all that sound until that moment? Does it lurk unseen in the cables, and where does it go when it's all turned off - back into the electric point? The fact is, it's in the musician's brain. I think I just wanted to pinpoint something physical in these drawings because my brain gets as tangled as those cables thinking about it.
Phew, what a week that was - Captain James T. Kirk actually went into space, aged 90, and satellite Lucy is off to Jupiter's Trojan asteroids for 100,000 years to discover the origins of everything. It's quite overwhelming.
Meanwhile, back on planet Earth, I just keep drawing: I start each drawing with a statement at top left, like the chord played in folk music before the jig starts up and the devil's music gets everyone delighted and dancing. It's followed by a succession of whirly characters, then towards the end at bottom right I make a couple of extended shapes to indicate a slowing down, before a big triumphant flourish at the end. It's a sort of duuuummmm-de-Boom! sound, but in pen. While I'm drawing I'm thinking shapes evocative of musical instruments: cellos, violins, tubas, flutes. Radiating shapes represent swelling melodies amongst firework bursts of sound. There is a pulse or rhythm indicated by the punctuation of black shapes, which originated in my asemic text drawings (is there such a thing as asemic music?) Paradoxically, this is a quiet, slow practice which helps to sooth away all the terrors of space, in every sense. This is the third drawing for submission to Open Eye Gallery's upcoming On a Small Scale exhibition. The second submission to Open Eye Gallery annual Christmas show. Last week's drawing brought up a much better suggestion for its title, still in Polish theme, from an old university friend on Instagram: 'Mazurka'. I like it! ..."usually at a lively tempo, with character defined mostly by the prominent "strong unsystematically placed on the second or third beat" (Wikipedia). My friend nailed it, so the first drawing shall indeed be titled Mazurka and not Polka as I originally thought.
I was thinking of a title for this one, but I've found it now. It has a sombre rhythm and references to tubas and brass, and unintentionally some of the black shapes resemble funeral urns - so I'm thinking more in terms of a New Orleans funeral parade: those great, joyful celebrations of a brilliant life lived. For my younger brother, Robin, who tragically passed away in June. He was a musician, luthier, roadie, and a keen lover of black soul music; and a passionate believer in Scottish independence. He was at the frontline of many marches, carrying the saltire flag. He even designed a new saltire for Scottish independence which is in use today. Somehow I think he chose the title for this drawing himself, the mischievous spirit! He jinxed earlier attempts of mine to title the piece, I typed it wrongly at least five times. Robins Parade it is, then. I'm leaving the title ambiguous by omitting the apostrophe on Robin, so it could equally be the song-bird's music at dawn. Both interpretations are meaningful. Last week's pencil drawing on manuscript paper turned out to be a good study. Needless to say I am most happy with the choices and decisions I made, the drawings are now positively singing to me. This is the first completed musical drawing for Open Eye Gallery's On a Small Scale winter exhibition. I think I am going to title it Polka - that's what came into in my head when I was drawing this, and it definitely looks like there is dancing going on, maybe a polka, or an eight-some reel or strip the willow?
It's interesting to see how, from a distance, this does resemble sheet music. Benign Little Town
15 x 21cm, gouache, mapping pens and printing ink on Japanese tissue This is the third work I submitted to the Open Eye Gallery’s On a Small Scale annual Christmas exhibition. This is just about my last work on Kozu Shi tissue paper, which ceased production about 4 years ago. When I discovered it wasn’t being made any more I rang my supplier, Lawrence Arts, who kindly dug out all their remaining sheets for me. Apart from two small pieces, these works for the Christmas exhibition have finally used it all up, but I have already found an excellent replacement from Lawrence Arts. The entire exhibition will be available online this year, for the first time in its history, alongside selected works on show in the gallery. The gallery is open by appointment only at the moment, for details and contact details please visit the gallery here. Star Making Machine 150x300mm Ink, monotype and gouache on Japanese tissue I finished three works for the On a Small Scale exhibition at the Open Eye Gallery this week. Usually I catch the train to Edinburgh to hand them into the gallery, it's a highlight of my year - the beautiful journey across the Forth Bridges followed by a warm welcome when I arrive at the Gallery. This year was different, though, due to coronavirus measures. Fife, where I live, is in tier 2 restrictions at the moment while Edinburgh is higher in tier 3, and people have been told to remain in their own health board districts and not to travel unless absolutely necessary. I decided to post my works this year. Read on for the maelstrom (or should that be Mailstrom?) of Jobsworth which followed ...
My 'honorary brother', Ian, has been in Venice for a few days. We grew up together in the same street in Scotland and did our spell in London at the same time, but now he lives in Germany so I don't see so much of him (especially these days when nobody sees much of anybody!) but we speak twice a week on the phone. Every day when he was in Venice he sent me photos of his hotel and places he had been, which I am sure unconsciously rubbed off on me because as I was deciding on a title for this one I realised there were references to canals, Renaissance buildings and motifs, the romantically scruffy and slightly broken feel of Venice, misty vague shapes, and I noticed the unreadable writing in a foreign language (asemic text) had a distinctly dangly appearance. Ian had sent me a photo of the most beautiful old Murano glass chandelier (in his hotel bedroom!!!) which made a huge impression on me - I love it so much, I reckon without knowing it the chandelier influenced the delicacy and suspended nature of the lettering.
So, this one is titled Letter From Venice. It will be going off to the Open Eye Gallery in Edinburgh for inclusion in the annual Christmas Exhibition On a Small Scale along with two other works of A5 dimensions. The exhibition is going to be online for the first time in its history. It was a good move on the Gallery's part because who knows which Covid alert tier Edinburgh, or any of our cities and towns, will be in next month. If the spread of the virus doesn't slow down it could happen that non-essential businesses will be forced to close their doors again. If that does happen, the show goes on - three cheers for the internet! I am delighted with the way these four flags worked out; larger and more complex, they are for submission to Open Eye Gallery's annual Christmas exhibition in Edinburgh.
After a very busy couple of weeks I got back to work making larger confused flags for the Open Eye Gallery On a Small Scale exhibition. This is an annual event hosted in the run-up to Christmas, when one of their beautiful Edinburgh New Town Georgian galleries is turned over entirely to line the walls in banks of A5-size art by gallery artists. The works are presented simply unframed on the walls in a grid formation, an exciting melting-pot of ideas, materials and colour (the artists' party is great, too). Affordable small works mean a great chance to buy art for Christmas!
It has been interesting to scale up from the miniatures I have been making for Brexit Art Machine, I can fit in more drawing to combine with ideas of obfuscation, disorder, transparency and confusion. I am enjoying the flag invention more than ever as I make flags 14, 15, 16 and 17 in the series especially for the gallery, and then watch out in 2020 for some more miniature flags for the vending machines. 7 great things about this week: 1. Waves aren’t made of water: I watched David Malone’s The Secret Life of Waves on BBC iPlayer. Poetry, philosophy, life and death, needles blowing bubbles, and Professor Michael McIntyre’s fab lab’s wave box at Cambridge University complete with rubber ducks - marvellous. 2. Brexit Art Machine is in London, with my mini confused flags loaded alongside works by brilliant artists in the vending machine! It is popping up at selected venues, and was outside the Houses of Parliament a couple of days ago. 3. A friend making an extremely speedy recovery from a knee replacement and looking fabulous and happy after years of pain. 4. I found a beautiful, tiny insect exhausted on the kitchen worktop. I smeared a strawberry beside it and observed through a magnifying glass: insect found its way to the spot of juice and fed by dipping its proboscis. I noticed it had a pair of curly antlers fringed spectacularly with hairs. After a while it had enough energy to fly away and I felt nurturing and deep-down happy. 5. Coloured pencils so soft it's like drawing with eyeshadow. 6. Relief. When pain, worry, nightmares and things that go bump in the night disappear and you feel yourself again. Maybe it was the full moon. 7. Getting back to work in my room. Thanks for visiting, see you next week! Four little drawings on pages torn from a vintage gardening dictionary, in technical pen, pencil and gouache. The titles are taken from an entry, selected at random, on the pages I worked on - all from the 'C' section!
I am submitting them for Open Eye Gallery's annual Christmas exhibition held in Edinburgh. I was invited to submit work for Open Eye Gallery's annual Christmas exhibition 'On a Small Scale' in Edinburgh for the first time this year. Each artist submits works measuring 15x21cm, either landscape or portrait format, which tile the walls of one of the galleries and make a spectacular show.
I submitted these three drawings, all in black rotring pen on laminated tissue. |
Welcome to my work journal - a weekly update on drawings, work in progress, doodles and day-dreaming.
I changed the website address a few months ago, so some older links on previous posts are broken. If you click one of those and it takes you to a strange page, simply replace the .co.uk after the heatherelizawalker. with weebly.com and it will work again. <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
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As well as the work you see here, I illustrate under the name of Binky McKee (my mother's maiden name was McKee, Binky was every single one of my great grandmother's many cats!)
If you would like to visit my Binky website, please click the picture above. <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Dissolving PeopleA symbol on the footpath outside a local primary school gradually disappearing as the image breaks up and wears away until eventually it is obliterated by leaves and barely discernible. Photographed at intervals of several months between February 2021 and November 2022, oldest at the top.
(My shoes look so new in the first pic, and note the transition to new phone in the last photo). <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
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April 2024
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A 2013 work book, still very much in use Please note all images on this website are ©Heather Eliza Walker 2013 - 2020, and may not be used or reproduced without prior consent. |