A naked figure in a room. I look, I sketch, I look again. What is my point? A glimpse of clarity or an accumulated crystalization? What begins as a charcoal line on a smudged sketchpad during a life drawing session, gives impulse to a fulsome experience that alters my creative course. This is arrival and breakout, inspiration and challenge. Generating a plethora of images, new questions, and yielding moments of satisfaction, Motive Evolving emerges.
When I see the model posing, I see movement. After quickly depicting the model’s breath, a twitching muscle, the self-conscious tummy-tuck, quivering fleshy bits, and moistness, these vulnerable, gorgeous, creative fragments evolve from sketching to painting.
As beautiful or ugly as the human form is seen, the manifestation of its resilience is awesome. How do digestion and respiratory systems collaborate? How do eyes, ears, nose, and mouth synthesize in harmony or dissonance? How does genitalia do its sexy job when feces is a visitor? The awareness of a fine-line walk at this point, between harnessing creative obsession and falling into mere figurative representation, leads to an anatomical exploration from an aesthetic perspective. Notebooks overflow, questioning form and function, color and texture, viscosity, anecdotes, and, naturally, sketches. Piles of sketches.
Working with pens, pencils, pastels, potatoes, oil, acrylics, ink, watercolor, paper, beads, modeling clay, food, anything safe and possible, a body of work forms. (Insert awareness of pun here.) These include hundreds of sketches, over 20 small to medium-sized paintings, several large paintings including two-meter works on canvas, palm-sized sculptures, paper collages, and printed products such as masks and mugs. (Insert dark side music here.)
Key to Motive Evolving is the concept of a series. Here lies the freedom to get stuck into it, to race, waver, hesitate, and to take a form to its point of bitter-endedness. Plunging down color theory rabbit holes and soaring across cultural landscapes, I create as if no one is watching, but practise as if they are. Within the realms of my art and music experience, more questions about motives, themes, developments, recurrences, resonances, and tangents ensue. One body part leading to another. Around 2011, within my artists’ community, the series was being described as Corporeal Abstraction.
Meanwhile, an irksome question that others feel compelled to ask is, “Have you sold anything?” Sometimes, I respond by twirling around to the soggy beat of commercial chatter as I teeter on the rope of truth. However, thank you for asking and for your past, present, and future support for contemporary artists. It is with satisfaction that Motive Evolving may be described as a solid success. From the model’s pose in a dusty art room, through to the creative impulse and multiple sales, the link is clear. How fortunate that I do practice since the world, or at least the better bits of it, is watching after all! (Insert awesome resilience “great do more” badge here.)
To confront challenges,
respond to inspiration,
eyes and ears peeled for a breakout;
this is how the motive evolves.
Elisabeth’s art is available for you today. You are welcome to contact her anytime.
Commissions are welcomed. All projects and ideas, regardless of size, are considered. Let’s put on our finger-dancing shoes and get into some serious tapping!
The following online gallery is elegant to navigate and designed to suit every budget. Browse joyfully through this collection of fine art and prints. You may fall in love.
© 2021 Elisabeth Kelvin
Elisabeth Kelvin 