I saw some beautiful art work yesterday in an art gallery.
I liked it so much I almost bought something. That would be a first for me. To buy a piece of art work by an another artist, for myself. I could start a little collection, I was thinking. Tempting.
It would have set me back $900.
Here it is:
Detail of a similar piece:
Here is the artist's statement about her "Text Works":
"For the past several years my work has addressed historical events as seen through the lens of news media. Through my first-hand visits to, and subsequent renderings of, my visual experiences at 100 historical disaster sites pictured in news photographs, I have worked to address a sense of grief. While researching each site for this project, I have scoured many old newspapers for written information. Along the way I have noted many poetic passages that conjure graphic images of their own. In Text Work, I have removed several quotes, including eyewitness testimonies and first-hand accounts, from single sheets of paper. What is left is a lacey absence."
The artist is Canadian and I love her work. Her name is Michelle Forsyth.
Here are some more of her pieces I saw, with captions:
Point Ellice Bridge Collapse, Victoria, BC, May 26, 1896
"Shortly after 2pm on May 26, 1896 during the height of the annual Victoria Day celebrations, an electric streetcar plunged from the iron-trussed Point Ellice Bridge into the cold waters of the Gorge Waterway. Loaded with 140 passengers, the streetcar was far heavier than the bridge was designed to handle and was pierced by crashing timbers and ironwork as it descended into the water. Fifty-five people drowned as a result.This drawing depicts a cloud floating over the site of the accident."
December 6, 1917*
(#5 from Ostinatos)
"At 9:04 on the morning of December 6, 1917, the Mont-Blanc, a French munitions ship inbound to Halifax, NS for a brief stop before heading off to the war in Europe collided with the outbound Imo, a Belgian reef ship. Due to the fact that the Mont-Blanc was carrying a load of gun cotton, TNT, and picric acid, the impact caused the ship to catch fire and blow up. The explosion had a devastating effect. It leveled much of northern Halifax and Dartmouth and caused 1,963 people to perish. Evidence of the disaster can still be found in Halifax including a broken window pane and a piece of wreckage that was driven into the wall from the blast. My piece documents some blooms on a tree above the site where the explosion took place."
Here is what the artist has to say about her work:
"(...)I consider my work to be a reflection on, and a reaction to, the onslaught of images of suffering in our contemporary world.
All of my work is made in response to an extensive collection of images of trauma culled from television, newspapers, and the Internet. From horrific scenes of disaster captured by our contemporary news media to the smaller scale depictions of personal tragedy, images of peril and demise have permeated nearly every aspect of contemporary life.
(...) As I find myself confronted by this onslaught, I mourn our tolerance of violence in our media and our inability to express a sense of grief.
(...) As a humanistic response to these kinds of tendencies, I transform images of abjection and spectacle into glittering surfaces that shroud the images of pain with layers of beauty. Quiet and contemplative, my work bears traces of its making. From thousands of tiny, sinuous brush strokes or cut-out paper flowers, to diluted layers of watercolor, the value of my time spent becomes just as important as the final product. Color functions to conceal and hide the images in a protective coating, which creates a distance that I hope will empower viewers with a greater ability to bear witness to the complexities of our mediated experience."