I have been away from my blog, mainly because my computer was broken and editing my blog from my tablet was very frustrating. Basically it gave me more white hair than I needed ;) I will try again to post regularly and share my posts mainly through my Instagram and Facebook: https://www.instagram.com/bertie.emma/?hl=en There were a few nice achievements this year, in my painting activity: 1. Book cover design for a research anthology edited with my colleagues 2. I participated at an exhibition at Filosoffen and I sold two works 3. I became member of the Nordic Watercolor Society 4. Two painting have been reserved by two nice ladies. For this new year I have a few little projects, which should not take too much time from my research work. First of all I started editing a little poetry booklet about my art, which for now I call: The imaginary cabinet of curiosity. My aim is to give a poetic glimpse about natural converging forms through my paintings and words. It is also a way to give my watercolors a more concrete purpose. And then I got the opportunity to exhibit my paintings for two months, March and April 2022 at Bolbro Brugerhus, a local institution for elderly and families located in Bolbro, a suburban area in Odense. It is not a fancy gallery but a meaningful institution. I discussed with another artist active in the institution about the possibility of offering a watercolor workshop, which could be interesting. I am planning to show my paintings, but also sell postcards and bookmarks with my illustrations. My main work as a researcher is also going fine, I managed to develop and test a series of prototypes and publish a few papers. However, there is always something more I want to do. I feel like burning inside, wanting to do and discover more, even if I am happy about my life, it has never been better in the end, I am always a bit dissatisfied with what I do and the way I do it. I started to keep a new journal to document how different and unexpected the form of a flower can be, with respect to what is typically expected from the typical daisy or rose, which I hope could develop into a future booklet. I post here a few sketches from my new journal, which are at this point focusing on the development of azaleas. Green buds recalling the reptilian life that once was, blossoms like human hearts and tailed creatures, pulsating of life and pushing to explode in the world. Because in the end, if I had infinite time ahead of me, I would follow the infinite line of the branch of a tree, fractally continuing through the lines of its leaves. If I had infinite time, with a brush I would trace the curvy lines of every sea shell I encounter on the shore. Every contour and wrinkle of buds and blossoms, pulsating from the life expecting to explode from their inside to the world outside them. Nothing is more powerful and stunning that the raw beauty of life in formation. Everything is moving, in a continual dance of growth and metamorphosis, and no spectacle is more powerful than this. Thanks for stopping by Bertie xxx
0 Comments
Unfortunately my computer broke down and I have never edited my blog from my tablet, well let's say that it was about time that I found out how to do it 😉 Moreover, was totally cooked by my last class for this semester (fall 2021), a lecture in Media theory, so I thought why not making an extra post??? ;) But then, my computer almost exploded, I got sucked by other tasks, which I did on my tablet and I got stuck. But finally I am back here and I would like to tell the story of my latest book-cover design. I designed this illustration for an anthology we have edited with my research group, we published a collection of articles with the theme "to create oneself", in Danish: "at skabe sig selv". The other focus is about digital media and technologies in our daily activities. I painted this watercolour taking inspiration on the theme, I wanted to create a strong but also a fragile image about self creation. At first I drew a person holding a mobile phone and shaping her face with her thumbs on the surface of a mobile phone. I was not so satisfied, it was a poetic image, but it seemed a bit obvious. So I tried to take a more naturalistic and metaphoric detour and I started to sketch butterflies, which represent a wonderful symbolism for self creation or autopoiesis. Here you can see some of the previous drawings Inhave made of evolving butterflies.
it is amazing how many stages butterflies go through, to acquire their adult form. They starr as eggs, larvae, pupae, crysalis and then they end up as butterflies. From a physical, mechanical perspective, their growth vary significantly in terms of rate, also because the different stages grow and develop in different ways, which might be not exactly comparable. As developed adults, butterflies have a tubular, aerodynamic form, with large and light wings, which can capture the air and use it to their advantage. The process through which butterflies developed is segmented and going towards different direction, while at the same time, aiming at a specific configuration. The butterfly never stops growing and changing, experimenting different stages of: stasis, crawling and flying. it is one of the mkst inventive, dynamic creature, ever changing and never stopping, a living symbol of autopoiesis. Thank you for stopping by Emma "While the Brownian movement may thus simulate in a deceptive way the active movements of an organism, the reverse statement also to a certain extent holds good. One sometimes lies awake of a summer's morning watching the flies as they dance under the ceiling. It is a very remarkable dance. The dancers do not whirl or gyrate, either in company or alone; but they advance and retire; they seem to jostle and rebound; between the rebounds they dart hither and thither in short snatches of hurried flight, and turn again sharply in a new round at the end of each little rush." This citation is from On Growth and Form, by D'arcy Thompson, published in 1917, I discovered this book thanks to my husband. I read a shortened Italian translation almost 20 years ago and now I found a digital copy of the whole work in English. The whole work is circa 1000 pages, but it is all worth. In his book, D'Arcy Thompson argues and shows through illustrations and mathematical formulas, how biological beings are subject to the same physical forces that affects inorganic things. He goes on saying: "In like manner Lucretius, and Epicurus before him, watched the dust-motes quivering, in the beam, and saw in them a mimic representation, rei simulacrum et imago, of the eternal motions of the atoms." Again D'Arcy Thompson gives as an example of the organic resembles the organic, the macroscopic with the microscopic. Gravity, weight, speed, rate of growths and difference in rate of growth in the different directions - contribute in shaping organic beings as well as the inorganic. The physical forces participating in the growth of organic forms, also convey a sense of movement and tension to the forms we perceive in nature, giving them a dramatic presence. From my aesthetic perspective, the impact of physical forces on organic and inorganic forms also contribute to the beauty that we perceive in natural forms: all the wrinkles, edges, contorted or stretched lines that capture our eyes. In this way, it is not by chance that we perceive similarities in between organic and inorganic forms, and across different organics forms alike, blending the vegetable, the zoomorphic and anthropomorphic in front of our eyes as in an ever changing, ever evolving dream. Amazingly the art of dance, is an aesthetic play with physical forces, in the way dancers learn to move and shape their bodies (strategically strengthening and stretching their muscles) to better place their weight, exploit the ground friction, charging energy and centrifugal force to defeat gravity, to high jumps and multiple turns. The fundamental principles in the art of animation are ultimately about reproducing movement in combination with the physical forces: acceleration, gravity, centrifugal force etc. And that is what fascinates me in natural forms and in the visual arts. Take this little fellow here. A helicopter seed, probably from a maple tree. This particular kind of seed is called helicopter seed, it can be found for different types of trees and have evolved through time "wings", so to exploit the air currents and the wind to reach the ground a bit away from their parent tree to plant new ones and grow a forest. D'Arcy Thompson teaches us that the specific size of a species, that he calls magnitude, is also a physical force affecting the development of organism, altering its form. In this case these seeds are quite tiny and light, the size of an insect, therefore it makes sense that they develop wings of the size and forms of those we can find in moths, butterflies and dragonflies. However, as these seeds catch the air current, they start rotating around their axis, in order to move forward and apart from their parent tree. I collected this fellow downtown in Odense. I liked it because it was resembling an insect or a long neck bird, like a crane. The wings spread apart. In the centre the body, consisting of the seedpod, looked like a bony chest or a vertebra. A long bony neck departing from the body, ending in a pointy head and beak, bending to look at the ground destination, as if evaluating if it is a good place to land.
Thanks for passing by :) Bertie |
AuthorFreelance illustrator and painter. Archives
May 2023
Categories |