Finding Equilibrium

Marie Hanlon at Fenderesky Gallery, Belfast, March 2016

The pressure exerted when using a drawing tool can result in a heavy line or a light one – this is as important as the line’s direction. Freedom and control, motion and stillness, flatness and depth, pull against each other to generate a taut uneasy balance, a scratchy equilibrium. If asked to say what these pieces are about, the answer would be that they are not about anything which can be precisely named. There is a sense that what is going on is a slow motion process of dismantling and transforming. Recognizable forms give way as their component parts separate and combine in new configurations. Occasionally pieces carry echos of their origin, but the concern is to find something new, something previously unknown and unseen. Ambiguous space is established, it can open, it can close off, it can do both within the same piece.

Pencil and acrylic on paper and board
Dimensions variable, 2016