(Statement) Fiona Halse , Red Gallery, 2005

Fiona Halse
Recent Work
Red Gallery,  2005

Statement

I hope that through this exhibition the viewer can experience the versatility of line and the malleable nature of creating art.

My concerns are for the composition. The final product is the result of layered decisions. I was attracted to acrylic paint in the Savasana series because of its direct quick drying properties. Like drawing, forms can be quickly erased and reworked. The process of drawing in art, its malleable nature and its ability to transcribe instinctive decisions is important in my practice. This exhibition I hope will reflect a search to understand how to arrange harmonies, create meaningful form and to trace inner contours.

I feel I’ve taken Klees’ line for a walk and absorbed some of Kandinsky’s ideas of line changing to plane and rotating around points. I have always also been interested in Motherwell’s collages and Picasso’s versatile use of line to create space. In some of the works the golden mid-tone and the suspension in form has been influenced by Early Renaissance Icons and Japanese Calligraphy.

I have enjoyed understanding how one line can hold or push forward another and how this changes with either tone or color or thickness in form. A disappearing line or a open blurred mark can also create space, even positive form, if assembled sensitively. This exhibition is the result of a search to understand my own personal aesthetic language. The picture plane encompasses the boundaries to this game. Line to me traces the search.

Every line says “Here I am!” . Each holds its own, reveals its own eloquent features and whispers “Listen to my secret!”( Wassily Kandinsky)