FROM THE DRAWING ROOM

Exhibition: "Drawing Room"

Artist: Peteris Ciemitis

Gallery: Linton and Kay, Mandoon Estate, 10 Harris Road, Caversham WA

Dates: 6-27 October 2019

(photo credit: Kathryn Yip-Ross)

Drawing is central to life.

Almost every made thing around us was drawn at some time. Our jewellery, clothes, car, neighbourhood, city … and our art. Drawing shapes our thinking and our seeing. It makes us contemplate, study and analyse what it is that we try to depict when we draw something. It might be form, shape, light, shadow, absence, presence, motion or thought.

As humans it is likely that drawing was one of the earliest activities that we engaged in. And in my own career I have used it both as an Urban Designer and as an Artist. The approach of each discipline differs from the other, which for me has resulted in a drawing style which uses a hybrid of the two. A kind of tension between analysis and intuition.

Almost all of the works in this exhibition are drawings; some are on canvas and some on paper. As a medium, the process of drawing has allowed me to extend and examine ways in which thoughts, ideas and images can be conceived and communicated. As an artist, I’ve also become interested in working with inks and liquid paint, and the rigor and constraint it places on my practice. Every mark becomes committal and purposeful; there is no turning back or redoing it. Every work becomes unique.

In this exhibition I have been interested in form and identity. The works present the viewer with interpretations of place and the idea of absence. The hilltop forms explore places of sometimes chaotic, inaccessible undulation and structure. These forms are echoed in similar shapes and structure within some of the figurative pieces. The faces especially use structure, shape and pattern to explore the idea of absence and distortion. These drawings repeatedly examine the idea of identity as it might be presented, concealed, omitted or fragmented. This fragmentation realises its apex in the tree drawings which try to challenge our thinking about what it is that we actually see in these forms. Do we see shape, movement, texture, shadow, light, fragility, strength or transience?

I hope the works in this exhibition invite you to engage in quiet inspection and contemplation of these questions, as they have done for me.