Christabel Mitchell's Page

Website

http://sites.google.com/site/christabelmitchell/Home

College / University

University of Huddersfield

Program / Degree

BA(Hons) Fine Art: Painting and Drawing

Graduation

July 18, 2008

Member type

Artist

If you're an artist, what kind of art do you make?

Conceptual, Drawing, Painting

About my artwork

A main theme within my work is the inhabitation and invasion of space. This has largely been explored through using the discipline of drawing, using traditional mediums such as pencil and paper. However, I have also used more unconventional materials for creating drawings, such as wire or paper circles, but which still proclaim to be drawings as they are a line based composition.

Traditionally, drawing has been considered as something secondary to painting, as it was used as a medium for preparatory work, with private qualities. Therefore I aim to create drawings which are just as powerful as paintings.

Making geographic reference, the work in particular, looks into issues of urbanisation, such as the increasing growth of cities. The work also explores the virus-like nature of urban settlements, for instance, the unstoppable growth of cities which spread and sprawl into and take away the natural environment. Frank Lloyd Wright described the city as a living and breathing creature. Thus the drawings have become cell like in nature, where, for example, the nucleus can be compared to the core of the city and where the outer areas of the drawing act as a metaphor for suburbs. By using few mediums, the cities and towns have been reduced to the same visual language, reflecting their repetitive nature. The drawings have no boundaries, and are allowed to carry on, spread and grow.

The large paper drawings convey the dominant nature of cities. The concentrated ‘cell’ like drawings may only be small in size, but with their dominant, intense and meticulous mark making and placement, they inhabit the whole of the page reflecting the greed of cities. The white negative space is just as important as the drawing. The marks become more concentrated towards the centre or ‘the core’ of the drawing, as if all the marks have been brought together, mirroring the way that people migrate to the city. They have a somewhat free, but controlled nature about them. Their busy meticulous marks reflect the chaotic nature of cities. The monochromatic quality of the drawings, represent the dull, raw and industriousness of cities.

The conglomeration of circles titled ‘Unstoppable Mass’, grow on the wall like an organic form and spread like a group of particles. The drawing also plays with the comparison of the city to a Petri dish. The relief of circles resemble a landscape, exploring issues such as growth, space, fragmentation and the virus like nature of urbanization.

The drawings have an uncontrollable quality, they are able to fill any part of the space and carry on infinitely – space is an infinite and immeasurable thing.

May 2008

Centre of the artworld:

New York, London