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In his postscript to The name of rose Umberto Eco argues that every story tells a story that has already been told by somebody else.. Artists often take on other works of art to start their new work. We “soak” the stories of places and people and create ours, which however await the right time to inspire other creative mind.

We are “walking avatars” of stories and experiences. The figurative paper painted cut-outs, created through the past ten years gradually have been piling up.They represent people with different stories, background, status of mind, keeping on walking and trying to survive through their complex journeys through life.

Collages, cut- outs and other works on paper: Fragile Balances

The unfinished line,the obscure drawing, the work in progress may speak loud and express the idea strongly than the finished work. My interest of creating stories with abstract relations,between magic and realism, brought two of my drawings to the Hundred Years Gallery  show, As it stands: Muted Unfinished Unrefined.

Hundred Years Gallery,13 Pearson Str., London

I will be  showing  works on canvas and paper at #talentedAF2017.

They are created in the past two years and focus on human contacts and relationships,the journeys we make, and the stories we create.The figurative and abstract meet in a multilayered  unreal world, based on familiar faces and neighbourhoods.

I am looking forward to the event! I hope everybody will enjoy the experience!

#talentedartfair

Abstract is arguably the opposite of figurative –  when nothing reminds you of familiar objects; no referrals to bodies, faces,buildings, flowers, birds..

The above qualifies it as a merely impossible ground to play on, a fragile area to endure.

Even a simple line, vertical and thicker at the top,and thinner at the bottom end, brings associations of  a human, passing at a distance. Add a dot, draw a tiny arch,a horizontal line..The narrative jumps on -sea shores, boats, lonely Noah, or Odysseus who is returning.

One of my drawings from the series “Motherhood” was exhibited in the group show ‘perspective of the figurative”, at 5th Base Gallery,Heneage St., in London, in May 2016.

Ivilina Kouneva; fleeting figures and the observer effect

Ivilina Kouneva is a Bulgarian-born artist who is currently part of Reading’s Open Hand Open Spacestudio community. Her work is fluid and alive with colour, full of seemingly moving figures, who appear and disappear, depending on the position and angle of the observer. Three of Ivilina’s large mixed media works on canvas are shown below, and I hope illustrate this effect.

Scientifically, the words ‘observer effect’ may refer to several different phenomena, but in general refers to changes in an observed system brought about by the act of observation. I like to imagine to myself that in some way the figures in Ivilina’s works are fleeting, subject to their own form of observer effect…

‘In Between Realities’

…Or perhaps the act of observing them changes our perception.

“The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself.” – Bertrand Russell

‘Through places and spaces I’

By Immy Smith