Twitter Art Exhibit
Something a little different. This is my entry for the 2021 Twitter Art Exhibition in aid of The Leukaemia and Intensive Chemotherapy Fund (LINC). It’s something I’ve absolutely loved making and has reminded me how important it is to keep drawing! Observing. Practising. Learning. It’s a little postcard sized mixed media sketch that I scanned and finished using Procreate on my daughter’s iPad. I did a short course on digital painting and drawing at The Royal Academy a few years ago, but haven’t really utilised what I learned until now and it was a lot of fun rediscovering the app and using it to play with some ideas I’ve had relating to cave art and the ancient pigment ochre.
From Darkness Comes Light
The deepest, darkest nooks and crannies of Chauvet Cave in France were reserved for the most spectacular of the cave’s paintings. Why neolithic artists chose these difficult, inaccessible places, we may never know, but it’s clear that in terms of subject matter, it was wildlife that came first. In great number. As Barbara Ehrenreich says, humans “knew where they stood in the scheme of things, which was not very high”. Compared to the lions, the wooly rhinos and the mammoths, they were depicted simplistically, if at all. As Ehrenreich goes on to say, “maybe, in the ever-challenging context of an animal-dominated planet, the demand for human solidarity so far exceeded the need for individual recognition that, at least in artistic representation, humans didn’t need faces.”
In the millennia since, as society has evolved, as nature’s been tamed and wildlife lost, humans have placed themselves more and more at centre stage. The anonymous ochre stained palm prints became perhaps Medici’s oranges. Now, maybe just marks made with an exchange of charged electrons. The ancient paint pot now a vessel to convey a particular idealised notion of human beauty and perfection. Venus and the sorcerer. Hydra-like, for every question, two more surface.
Kathleen Jamie, in her gorgeous book, ‘Surfacing’ imagines a spiral of time when,”events remote to one another can wheel back into proximity.” What would our neolithic ancestors make of our striated, segregated, selfie-centred world?
In Celtic mythology the Birch tree symbolises renewal, rebirth and new beginnings and together with the cloak, held aloft by the Hora of Spring, I hope it brings whoever ends up with this little picture, some joy this season. After a particularly long winter lockdown filled with its own dark nooks and crannies I think we all could do with some of that.
Please do go visit the Twitter Art Exhibition website and get involved. Maybe even buy some work and spread the love x
#TwitterArtExhibit utilizes social media and public engagement to generate income for charities and nonprofit organizations. In the past, #TwitterArtExhibit has generated funds for a library suffering from deep funding cuts to purchase much-needed children’s books, for an abused women’s shelter seeking to improve the lives of the families they serve, and for an arts organization mentoring underprivileged young adults in preparation for careers in the visual arts.
Artists worldwide donate postcard-sized, handmade original artwork to the TAE
TwitterArtExhibit organizes a local, physical showcasing of the art.
The public is invited to buy the art at an affordable, flat price.
